Insert Jaw Dropping Reveal Here
by Hakurei Ryuu
Summary: ACMSES. It's been months since the Librarian's untimely demise, and it seems that everything is back to normal. However, death can mean different things to different people, and all too often it can bring people together in ways unimaginable...
1. Water

**AN:** Well, here it is. You've all been dying to know, so I'll keep the note short this time. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer:** I claim no ownership to _anything_, other than Valerie and her team. Also, _Master of the Library_ wrote a couple passages, when I then broke up and edited slightly. Just FYI.

* * *

**Insert Jaw-Dropping Reveal Here**

_"Drink up, baby doll.  
Are you in or are you out?  
Leave your things behind,  
'Cause it's all going on without you._

_"Excuse me. Too busy.  
__You're writing your tragedy.  
__hese mishaps, you've bubble-wrapped when  
__You've no idea what you're like..."  
_—Frou Frou, "Let Go"

* * *

_"Huh. So _you're_ Valerie."_

_The healer's voice shook, her expression halfway between a scowl and that of fearful hope. "Who are you?" she demanded._

_The man before her chuckled. "I know__. __I look just like him, don't I?"_

Not really_, she thought. "That's not an answer."_

_"...I don't really have a name, to be perfectly honest. I could tell you what the others called me, but__—__"_

_"That's not an answer either," she said again. Loudly._

_Silence._

_"You could start," she added in a tone that left no room for argument, "by telling me why your signal on our computers is identical to Adrian's."_

* * *

Valerie's new search was both easier and harder than her last. Though she no longer sat in the monitor room 24/7, just because she didn't give off the appearance of working didn't mean she wasn't. Every moment of every day (even during what little sleep she could catch) saw her extending her empathic senses as far as they could reach, searching for the specific mental pattern that was pure _Adrian_. Until she or Kuroneko got any more solid leads, that was _all_ she could do. And that fact made Valerie alternately feel helpless and furious. At least before, with her systematic search, she could blame bad luck if nothing positive came up. When everything was intuitive, she could only blame herself and her own inadequacy.

"So it _was_ the Reality Marble?"

A mental nod from Ari. The little dragon had recovered enough that she was no longer confined to Valerie's head, but she still couldn't take on a physical presence. _The Eiran seers confirmed it. Adrian died while inside it._

"And what can they tell us about our new 'friend'?" Valerie asked.

A pause. _He was telling the truth about his backstory, they could tell that much._

The healer nodded. She hadn't told anyone about the anomolous signal that had shown up that day, not even Kuroneko. _Particularly_ not after she found the source of the signal. Valerie had been right about one thing, however: the fact that their signals were identical _wasn't_ a coincidence. But there was also something there that _shouldn't_ have been, and for the life of her, she couldn't figure out what it was.

"But...?" she prompted.

_...But you're right. There's something funny about his resonance pattern._

* * *

_She spoke the name he gave her aloud, trying out the sound in her mouth. "You're right," she said finally. "That's not a name."_

_He chuckled again, and Valerie had to wonder exactly _what_ was so funny. "Fitting though, given my status, don't you think?"_

_No, she didn't think, but she wasn't about to go into that. They looked similar, they acted similar, but the resemblance was only vague at best - instantly identifiable, but quickly forgotten in leiu of their _vastly_ different minds and experiences. And yet, for some reason, they _felt_ exactly the same. Their identical biological signatures (what the computers picked up) could be explained, given his history, but the feel of his mind and emotions baffled the healer._

_He looked at her suddenly. "I've seen you before, in my dreams. No, not like that!" he added at her furious glance his way, "Just memories and things. You and he talked a lot, didn't you?"_

_She frowned and didn't answer. Despite his openness and general friendly attitude, she hadn't quite decided to trust him just yet._

_Another sidelong glance. "Though, now that I actually meet you in person, I kind of wish it _was_ those kinds of dreams..." Valerie's astonished expression only drew another laugh out of him... at least until she stomped on his foot. Hard. "Yep," he muttered through his clenched teeth. "Definitely Valerie..."_

_By the time he shook it off, said empath was already walking away. "Feel free to visit sometime!" he called after her. _

_Without looking back, she lifted her hand in what could have been a wave or a bird. At that distance, he couldn't be entirely sure._

* * *

Valerie sat with her knees drawn up, head bowed, and hands touching her temples. There was nothing particularly symbolic about the position; she was simply trying to shut out the world and focus on that strange, inner calling—the only lead she had left.

_What am I missing?_

_The obvious, of course._ The mental voice didn't belong to Ari, but hearing extra voices when meditating was nothing new. Besides, when Valerie was concentrating this hard, any and all disbelief was suspended. Besides, the voice was right: only something hidden in plain sight could cause such a mental roadblock.

Start with the basics then. What is a soul?

The Soul _is_.

Exactly. So how could it get lost?

The Soul drops the body during sleep/coma/prolonged meditation, but remains tied to it. In death, that tie is severed, and the Soul snaps back to the All.

So could a Soul become disconnected from the All?

Can't be. That's the definition of hell.

_Adrian always maintained that he would probably wind up in hell someday_, Ari interjected.

_If he was in _that_ sort of "hell", Kuroneko would've found him_, Valerie replied, her distaste for such a ludicrous notion as divinely assigned eternal torment clearly evident in her mental voice. _But maybe there's some sort of middle ground we haven't thought of yet..._

Let's look at exceptionalities then. Aster doesn't have a soul.

Debatable. Aster's soul does not currently inhabit/control her body, but she _did_ have one at some point. Presumabely, it's still out there somewhere.

Just like Adrian's?

Adrian's body is dead. Aster's still has volition, emotion, even a personality. Her body clearly still draws on her soul, though that might be because of the numerous other Asters out there. Similar cases, but not similar enough.

_Let's not dismiss it though_, Ari said thoughtfully. _What else do we have?_

The idea of a Reality Marble itself. Supposedly it was "soul made manifest," or so Adrian had said to her, once.

A form of trancendence, then. The Soul's true nature and power revealed and put to concious use.

_Not all of it though_, said Ari. _But only a handful of individuals in the entire history of the multiverse have managed _that_. Adrian got pretty far though, according to Eadoin._

Valerie's mouth twitched into a smirk. _I thought Eadoin was a Bard, not a Seer._

Had Ari been in human shape, she would have been the picture of slightly rumpled dignity. _He's a man of many talents. Don't change the subject or you'll lose your train of thought._

Train. Yes. Did it jump the tracks? Had Adrian's plans jumped the tracks?

Clearly, unless he _planned_ to die.

Highly unlikely, though that last letter suggested that he _knew_ he was going to die, even if he didn't want to.

_Adrian..._

_Focus._

Right. The Reality Marble. What happened in there?

He fought past his limit. The Marble broke.

...

...

_An incomplete trancendence. Using the power of the Soul as a weapon. Dying with that power still coursing through him, connected to him. At that moment, the power _was_ him, and there was no dividing line between body and Soul._

Was it possible that the Soul could be broken?

"Val! Valerie!"

A panicked voice and a panicked mind startled the healer out of her reverie, and her eyes snapped open to see Chrys stumbling through the Med Ward's main door. She was stumbling because she was carrying an unconcious Aster on her back. "Please, there's something wrong with Aster. She's not waking up!"

Valerie immediately sprung up and helped the hanyou with her burden, easing the unconcious fae onto one of the beds and checking her vitals. Aster was barely breathing and her heartbeat had slown down dangerously. Her eyes were half-open, and the pupils were heavily dialated and only gave the merest of half-hearted twitches when Valerie flashed a penlight over them.

The healer was only half-listening to Chrys as the frightened girl babbled about how she'd been sleeping for longer and longer periods before finally slipping into this death-like state. Carefully, she sent a small probe into Aster's mind, trying to get a general idea of the problem. Almost immediately she hit a wall of some sort, and a quick scan told her that the wall encompassed almost her entire mind. It was shoddily constructed, and Valerie knew she could break into it with ease. But she could also see the roiling maelstrom on the _other_ side of the wall, and knew that this would have to be done carefully.

"This is a serious case," she muttered, almost to herself. She shook her head and turned toward Chrys. "You'd better leave her in the medical ward. There's only one thing I can do, and it may take hours."

The hanyou gave a fearful squeak, but was obedient. She gave her friend one more reassuring squeeze on the hand, and left the two of them alone in the ward. Valerie, meanwhile, selected a book off one of the shelves above the cabinets. There was only one way she would've missed the warning signs of something this severe, and that was if there _were_ no warning signs at all. No emotional ones anyway.

Valerie had read about this condition several times over the course of her career as an empath/healer, and knew exactly what caused it. "Inversed emotion," they called it. It was basically the result of intense emotional upheaval having no outlet, and thus being forced to turn back on itself—no emotional output, nothing for an empath to sense until it was already too late.

_'Emotion made to turn back on itself, and not leading to any thought or action, is the prelude to insanity,'_ Valerie recited to herself. _We've all been dealing with our grief in different ways, but how the hell did I _miss_ this? If I hadn't been so caught up in my own issues I could've cut this cycle off before it had gone this far!_

But there was no point in beating herself up now; she had a job to do. With a small flutter of paper, she finally located the page she needed. The first thing to do was to get Aster stabilized. Following the instructions in the text, Valerie manipulated the fae's body into something resembling a fetal position, but with the legs bent a a slightly wider angle. Next, she drew up a chair and situated herself facing Aster's back. The healer held up her hands in front of her, thumbs spread but not touching, and fell into a trance.

* * *

_"You really must admit, she's got a lot of skill."_

_Valerie looked to her right. "A-Adrian?"_

_He looked back at her. "Don't you agree?"_

_The empath looked foward again, and found herself watching Aster spar with Danielle using staves. "I don't know if 'skill' is the right word to use," she found herself saying. "She never works at anything because she sees it all as a game." Except it wasn't a game, not anymore. It had already gone much too far, and they were left fighting for their lives._

_Wait... she was fighting for _Aster's_ life, right?_

_Adrian glanced back at the sparring match. "All the more reason she'll make the perfect weapon when the time comes."_

_She looked at the Librarian, shocked. "You'd use a little girl as a weapon?"_

_"Why not?" he asked, continuing to watch the fight. "She has little or no fear of death, nor any qualms about killing. She'd find nothing I told her to do to be morally reprehensible. Certainly it would _work_ for what I'm trying to do. Why shouldn't I do it?"_

_Valerie felt dizzy. There was something very wrong with this picture. In fact, a picture was all it was anymore; Aster and Danielle were frozen in time around them, fading off into the distance as Valerie's eyes grew wide._

_Adrian took her by the shoulders. "Valerie, answer the question," he said. His voice was suddenly very loud, and the look in his eyes was almost fearful. "Why shouldn't I do it?"_

_"...I__—"_

* * *

Valerie opened her eyes a crack. Aster's breathing rate had gone up considerably, but still on the lower edge of the safe zone. She also noticed that Chrys was back, and sitting with her was a girl Valerie didn't recognize.

"I have her stabilized for now, but it's only a temporary fix. What she needs is an invasive bypass to break her out of this loop she's under." Valerie took a deep breath as she attempted to explain. "Conditions like hers don't need a lot of time to escelate to near-uncontrollable measures. Right now there's a wall surrounding most of her mind, and everything inside that wall is in absolute shambles. Thing is, the wall _used_ to encompass a much smaller area, but it's been growing as her condition worsened. It's even growing now."

The new girl, whom Valerie assumed was Akai, Aster's other friend, tilted her head slightly. "What happens if the wall thing grows to surround her whole mind?"

Valerie bit her lip. "One of two things can—well, _are_ happening. One is that, since everything inside the wall gets torn to shreds in that emotional storm, eventually all the normal body functions in her brain would get overrun, resulting in a permanent vegetative state or... or death. The other option is that she manages to survive the first option, in which case the wall would continue to expand until her mind can't hold it any longer and the storm bursts out onto the rest of us—sort of like popping an overinflated balloon," she finished lamely. Likely the girls had no idea what she was talking about, but it looked like they were beyond caring. Valerie swallowed. "The best thing you two can do for her is to stay here with her. Try not to move her much, but let her know you're here. I'm going to have to do it soon."

Chrys gulped. "And you have to dive into that?"

"Uh-huh."

"...How long will it take?"

"I don't know."

The healer looked over the unconcious fae. Aster was breathing properly now that the wall was more or less stablized, but some of the color was starting to leave her lips, which meant her body wasn't processing the oxygen properly. Her brain function was starting to deteriorate.

She ran mental fingers over the barrier once again. It wasn't in danger of collapse just yet, but if she were to break into it, she'd better fix the root of this problem in a hurry. Therefore, the best course of action was to analyze as much of the problem as she could see from outside the construct, so as to take immediate action once inside it. It was translucent enough that she could _almost_ see what was going on inside...

"Nnnnff..."

Aster shifted. Chrys yelped and jumped up. "Aster!"

And suddenly the wall was gone.

"Ah—" Valerie's mouth opened and closed with no noise coming out of it, but immediately took the fae's pulse. The storm had vanished with the wall, and all her vitals were rapidly returning to normal. "Sh-she's back..."

With a loud squeal, Chrys made to glomp her friend, and Valerie grabbed her by the collar of her shirt. "Waitwaitwait! She might not be ready for that just yet."

Aster gave a loud cough and blinked sleepily at them. "What'd I miss?"

And there was no restraining the gleeful hanyou after that.

-o-

It wasn't until almost an hour later that Valerie finally pursuaded Chrys and Akai to leave the med ward so she could finish her examination. In the meantime, news of Aster's miraculous recovery had spread like wildfire, but the ward was temporarily off-limits to everyone but Valerie and her patient.

"What happened in there, Aster?" the healer asked. "You were on the brink of death back there. People don't just recover from that."

"Umm..." the fae appeared to think about that. "Well, I'm here, so I must be alright, right?"

Valerie heaved a sigh. This was about the fortieth time they'd gone through a variation of the exact same exchange, and she _still_ hadn't gotten any information out of the girl. _I suppose the only way to find out is from the inside then..._ "I'm still going to have to check you over. Is that okay with you?"

"Sure."

"Good. At least I don't have to enter forcibly this time," she added under her breath.

Aster sat up straight on her bed and Valerie laid her hands gently on the fae's back. "Try and relax," said the empath. "You're a little bit tense."

"Oh, sorry." The blue-haired girl slouched a little bit.

Valerie closed her eyes and sent in a gentle probe. She wasn't sure what she was looking for, exactly, but there had been a subtle sort of shift in Aster's energy pattern the moment she woke up—almost like a couple of jammed gears clicking back into synch. That alone wouldn't have removed the storm _or_ the wall, but it might have broken her out of the loop she was stuck in. And, if she was lucky, it might also have given the emotional backlash that _caused_ the storm in the first place somewhere to drain off to, which would allow her to remove the wall on her own. If that was the case, though, then it was in everyone's best interest for Valerie to try and find what caused the original problem, so that it wouldn't ever happen again.

Aster's mind was messy, but not uncommonly so. Valerie explored rather easily, brushing past memories that were none of her business and heading straight for recent emotions—"recent" being no older than a month or so. As expected, it was much more cluttered than the rest, everything being simply piled on top of itself.

In the real world, Valerie frowned. It was a pile alright, but not nearly as haphazard as one might expect from memories of insanity. In fact, they seemed very deliberately packed together, almost as though to hide something. And the closer the healer looked, the more she swore there was a glimmering violet light peeking out from between the cracks...

* * *

_"What's the answer, Valerie?" Adrian's grip on her shoulders was almost painfully tight, and his desperation for her answer—_any_ answer—was evident in the increasing panic in his eyes. "Why shouldn't I do it? Tell me!" It was almost overwhelming, but Valerie swallowed and stood tall._

_"Because... Because you don't want to."_

_Adrian stared at her for a long moment, then closed his eyes with a shuddering sigh. "At last," he said quietly. "_Now_ we can begin..."_

* * *

Valerie stumbled backward as though struck, breathing hard.

Aster turned around and blinked at her. "Valerie-chan? Is something wrong?"

For a long moment, she couldn't think of a single thing to say to that. "Aster..." she said slowly, "you... you just wait here a sec. I'll be right back."

"Okay," the girl replied, and started humming the theme of Lucky Star to herself, swinging her legs a little.

The healer watched her for a moment as she slowly walked out, reinforcing the idea with as much of what little projective empathy she had as she could manage. And the moment she was outside... Valerie immediately bolted down the hallway.

It took less than five minutes to find Kuroneko (though Valerie suspected the Library was helping her somehow), and even less time to explain her suspicious to her. "I can't be certain until I get Danielle to look at her though," she finished, breathless. "She's the only one here who can confirm it."

Kuroneko paused to consider all this. "How much to you trust her discretion?" she asked finally.

Valerie didn't hesitate. "She's flighty, but she knows how to keep her mouth shut. Particularly when it's something important." To herself, she added, _Particularly after all the time she, Stacey, and I have spent together. If Danielle can keep _that_ secret, she can certainly keep this one._

After another long pause, the cat-girl finally nodded. "I'll go find her then. You stay with Aster and make sure she doesn't destabilize again."

"Got it."

-o-

Valerie blinked and shook her head, confused. She was back in the medical ward with Aster, who was chattering away about her favorite _Haruhi Suzumiya_ shipppings to fill the time. Before she had to endure much more of this conversation topic, however, Kuroneko burst in with Danielle in tow.

"Val!" said the redhead as soon as she caught sight of her friend. "Mind telling me what the hell's going on?" She caught sight of Aster on the bed, still obliviously daydreaming. "Did you need my help with something?"

_Kuroneko must not have told her anything yet_, thought the empath. "Well..." she began hesitantly, "for starters, do you remember what color Adrian's aura was?"

Danielle tilted her head quizically. "Adrian's...?"

"Yeah. Did you ever catch sight of it?"

"Plenty of times. It's not like he ever hides it. But why...?"

"Just answer the question," Kuroneko interrupted, staring at Aster as though trying to see into her soul.

"Uh..." Danielle thought for a moment. "Violet. Lots of violet. Some tan underpinnings too; I don't recall the exact combination, but I remember it was a really unique one. But the violet was the main thing, a really bright shade."

Valerie nodded thoughtfully. _I thought so..._ "Okay. Now have a look at Aster and tell me what you see."

Danielle frowned. She was far from an idiot, and knew exactly what her team leader was implying with that question, but looked anyway. When she was finished looking, she closed her eyes for a moment in thought, then opened them again and looked the healer straight in the eye.

"Aster's aura is normally barely visible unless she's in fae form," the redhead began, "probably because of her lack of a soul. When she's a fae, it's blue with white undertones because that's the color of her power manifestation. But as a regular girl, her _actual_ aura is mostly yellow. A decent amount of lavender underneath it, but yellow is definitely the primary."

Kuroneko looked at Danielle impatiently. "But what about—"

"Aster, would you excuse us, please?" Valerie interrupted. Aster, who was tilting her head curiously at them, nodded, and the three of them left the medical ward.

Valerie shut the door behind her. "She's not as dumb as she seems sometimes," she explained. "Okay, Danielle, go ahead."

"Aster is..." the redhead began hesitantly, apparently unsure how to word her observation. "She has—well... a _different_ aura now. _Adrian_'s aura."

Kuroneko bit her lip in thought while Valerie muttered softly, "I knew it..."

"But," she hastily added, "it's not really an aura, per se, because an aura surrounds the body and marks off where individuations split off from the whole. This thing was completely contained _within_ her, and..." she struggled to find the words for this, "not an individual at all. A fragment."

"'Fragment?'" Kuroneko repeated with a deeper frown.

"Does someone want to explain what's going on?" Danielle's eyes were very wide.

The healer bit her lip. "I'll tell you when I'm certain what it is." At the redhead's look of annoyance, she added hastily, "I will! I promise! It's just that _I_ don't know what the deal is either. Thanks to you I now have a vague idea, but it absolutely _cannot_ get out until I'm one hundred percent sure, or it'll cause all kinds of unnecessary trouble."

Danielle considered this for a moment. "Well... what's the idea? Maybe I can help."

"I'm certain you could but... Please, just trust me on this one." Valerie put a hand on her friend's shoulder. "It's not that I don't trust you, I _do_. And as soon as I have confirmation either way, you _will_ know. But for now, anyone could be listening, and the fewer people who know about this, the better."

"In other words," Kuroneko interjected, growing impatient, "mind your business and keep your mouth shut."

"_Kuroneko_," Valerie warned.

Danielle glared at her. "I'm not an idiot, Val. I _know_ who you've been searching for on the monitors these past few months. You can have a dangerously one-track mind sometimes."

Valerie didn't break her gaze. "Please."

It didn't take long. When the empath was this serious about something, there was no stopping her. Danielle rolled her eyes and sighed. "Fine. But you _are_ going to tell me sooner or later."

The healer let out the breath she'd been holding. "Promise," she nodded. With a wink and a half-hearted salute, Danielle jogged down the hallway back to her room.

"Well," said Kuroneko after a moment, "That was amusing. So now what?"

"One sec." Valerie stuck her head back in the door of the med ward. "Aster," she called inside it, "you can go now. Just make sure to stay where I can reach you easily, got it?"

"_Hai_, Valerie-chan," the fae called back, though the healer wasn't entirely certain she had heard.

Together, Valerie and Kuroneko began walking in the other direction towards the theology section. Valerie pinched the bridge of her nose. "A fragment of Adrian's aura," she muttered. "A soul shouldn't be _able_ to shatter like that, but his circumstances were admittedly different from most cases." She chuckled suddenly, recalling a line from _The Princess Bride_. "Maybe we should just take him to see Miracle Max..."

The cat-girl shook her head with an amused smirk. "Oh, he's been all dead for a while; the mostly-dead excuse isn't gonna work here. In fact," she paused and looked up thoughtfully, "from what we just learned, one could argue that he's even deader than most wind up to be, because there's no chance of reincarnation with a shattered soul."

"Some kind of limbo then?"

"Already looked in all the limbos I know of."

"Yeah, but if he doesn't have his soul with him, there'd be nothing for you to find, would there?" Valerie paused for a moment. "But it _is_ different than we originally expected. We've been operating under the assumption that it was a single soul we needed to find. Instead, we're left with—"

"Fragments," Kuroneko finished grimly. "And we have no idea how many we're talking about here."

"Or where they could possibly be."

There was a long silence as each of the two women contemplated their options. Finally, as they reached the gilded doors of the theology section, Kuroneko spoke. "Let's split up for the evening and research anything we can about the behavior of fragmented souls. Where do you want to meet?"

"How about the teen vampire romance novel section? No one from the Society ever goes there unless they're forced to, and if they are forced to, we'll hear them complaining about from a long way off."

"Done."

They parted ways.

* * *

**AN:** Yes, this is a chapter-fic. Originally it wasn't going to be, but both the fic's length and my speed are getting a little ridiculous, so I'm breaking it up. I assume you all want the plot-related info sooner rather than later, yes? XD

Reviewers will be sent cake! No lie! =P


	2. Earth

**AN:** Chapter two, hot off the presses! Enjoy it, everyone. ^^

**Disclaimer:** I only own Valerie and her team. MotL wrote a couple of the flashback scenes, which I then broke up and edited slightly.

* * *

_"I'll say it to be proud:  
__'Won't have my life turned upside down,'  
__Says the man with some gold-forged plan  
__Of a life so incomplete,  
__Like weights strapped around my feet.  
__Tread careful__—one step at a time."  
_—Globus, "Orchard of Mines"

* * *

_"Why do you do this?" She stood over him as he was laid out on the bed, bandaged all over and his arm in a sling, and attempted to stem the bleeding from a cut across his forehead. Head wounds had always made her slightly panicky, so she was working a little less gently than she ought._

_"Isn't it obvious?" he asked. "To protect people." He winced as the iodine on the cloth seeped into the wound._

_Her hand stopped and she bit her lip. "No, I mean why do _you_ do it, Adrian?"_

_He fell silent for a moment. "Because it's there. Because I can't stand to see innocents suffer. Because I made a deal with the Powers That Be and this is all I got. Because I'd be bored as hell otherwise." A shrug. "Pick one or all—they're all right to varying degrees."_

_She sighed heavily and smiled wryly at him. "You've gotten used to debating with me, haven't you?"_

_He smirked. "I ought to have by now; our conversations are some of the best intellectual stimulation I've had in centuries."_

_"That's saying something since, generally speaking, said stimulation usually ends with me winning or a tie." He mock-scowled at her, and she stuck her tongue out at him, and then proceded to bandage his forehead more calmly. When she was finished, she kissed his wounded forehead lightly and smiled. "Same goes for me, ke'chara."_

Wait a second..._ she thought as though in a fog._ I think I remember this...

* * *

Valerie woke with a start the next morning, burried under a pile of books, her laptop on standby on her desk. _What on earth...?_ She sat up, eyes darting around as she tried to conserve every detail of that dream. _Ari_, she said silently, _what was that just now?_

It took a moment for her guardian to reply; Ari was already digging methodically through Valerie's mind. _Something that's been going on for a while now_, she said, sounding a little distracted. _Though it's definitely a sign if you're finally realizing you've been having these visions._

She blinked. "A sign of _what_?" she said aloud.

_That's what I'm trying to find out. Give me a moment._

You never knew how long a "moment" could last in mental time, so the healer busied herself by making a quick sandwich out of the PB&J she always kept in her rooms—she got cravings for midnight snacks often enough, and was too lazy to go down to the kitchens (not to mention too embarrassed to potentially offend Rhia with her picky-eater issues)—and stacking up the books she had been paging through last night. There had been interesting theoretical ideas about fractured souls in every one of them, but nothing that Valerie hadn't already read about or disproved. Howevr, the actual nature of a soul depended on what fandom or universe you were in, so nothing could be tossed aside. It was with all this information swirling around in her head that Ari finally reappeared.

_Valerie, this way_.

A path appeared before her mind's eye, lit with dark purple beacons on either side of it. Valerie sat down on her bed, closed her eyes, and followed the trail.

_Down_ and _in_—

* * *

_"You've certainly taken a lot of punishment this time, Adrian..."_

_"I'm used to it," he replied, leaning back in his hospital bed like he had a thousand times before under her care. "And I'm just glad you and Phoenixia were able to patch me up."_

_From her place inside herself, Valerie smiled sadly. _I remember this conversation..._ she thought._ It always used to amaze me that he could just get up and keep walking after each beating he took, but he always laughed it off when I brought it up. Something about Death kicking him out of being dead for being too obnoxious...

_She shrugged. "It still surprises me to see you like this over and over again. Most people would have at least passed out or something, but you just keep on going, even if it's one step at a time. How do you do it?"_

_"That's a good question." He looked at her sharply. "How do you think I do it?"_

_The inner Valerie blinked_—Huh? What...—_and so did the outter one. "I'm... not sure..."_

_"Really? Are you a hundred percent on that?" His violet eyes stayed locked on her. "You're a smart girl. Think on it."_

* * *

And abruptly she was kicked out of her mind and back into the real world. Slowly, Valerie sat up and took a deep breath. Her heart was beating rather fast.

_That was the end of the one you awoke from this morning,_ Ari said. _You just woke yourself up in the middle of it accidentally._

_Probably the reason I remembered it in the first place_, Valerie thought to herself. "What were the others like? You said this has been going on for a while."

Ari's response was very carefully worded. _They were... important... in ways you subconciously picked up on. So far you've been doing everything you've needed to._

Valerie knew that tone of voice, but chose to press Ari for more information anyway. She swallowed. "I don't know about the other ones, but that last one was definitely a memory. I was _in_ that time and place before, it was only a few months after I met him. But in the dream it happened differently."

A vague mental nod. _It's that difference that you're meant to pay attention to._

Valerie considered this. "Not that I'm complaining about getting hints or anything, but where are they coming from? If you knew something was happening, why didn't you say anything?"

_Because when it comes to your own mind, I can't tell you anything you don't already know._

There was a long silence. This was something that Valerie already knew, of course, but she had yet to find an appropriate response when it was said.

_...Aren't you supposed to meet Kuroneko with your findings?_

Valerie took a moment to reply. "...Yeah. Stupid late-sleeper habits... Just let me stack up a few books and I'll head out."

Ari hesitated. _If I could do more, you know I would._

"Yeah, I know..." The empath straightened her shoulders and put on a smile. "Don't worry, I know you have only my best at heart."

And she did know. She knew that more than she knew anything else.

-o-

"Judging from the relative size of the piece inside Aster," said Valerie, "I don't think there are very many pieces altogether. Assuming all the pieces are the same size, anyway."

"That's a pretty big assumption," warned Kuroneko.

"Not as big as you'd think. In most fandoms, any fragment of a soul gains all the functions and capabilities of a complete soul almost instantaneously. It stands to reason that, since the Library exists everywhere, the laws here would follow the majority."

The cat-girl rolled her eyes. "That's only the majority of _known_ fandoms, Valerie. We don't know _everything_ of what's out there; no one does!"

Valerie raised a finger to her lip in thought. After a moment, she said, "Well, there are no guarantees in anything, we all know that. But if I have to take a leap of faith, I'd rather take the one with the most likely chance of being right."

Kuroneko leaned back into the sofa she was sitting on. "Sadly, the one with the best chance isn't always the one that's easiest to clean up after if we're wrong."

For a while they both sat in silence, trying to think of a way out.

"We need to find another piece," said Kuroneko. "If we could find even _one_ other one, we could compare the circumstances surrounding the two and come up with a halfway decent theory. The actual number doesn't matter until we know that much."

"Well for now we only have the one," Valerie said softly, "so we're gonna have to take risks on our maybes." She paused for a moment. "What is it about Aster that drew that fragment to her?"

"She has no soul of her own," said Kuroneko. "Adrian's soul could've just taken the path of least resistance."

Valerie bit her lip. "I keep getting the feeling that it's something else though..."

The cat-girl leaned forward. "No, I think that might actually be it. She was a ready-made vessel for any pieces that drifted this way. If—"

"Kuroneko," Valerie interrupted, "you underestimate what I had been doing before you told me about all this. I wasn't just running scans for Adrian's biological signature; a scan for his soul's resonance pattern was tied to it. And just in case his soul and body had somehow separated, I had the two scans run independantly, and cross-reference each other with every item scanned." She smirked. "Why do you think it all went so slowly, with the kind of technological power we have at our disposal? It wasn't just the sheer vastness of the multiverse slowing me down—it was a complicated search engine."

Kuroneko tilted her head. "You thought of a lot."

Valerie glanced off to the left. "Not enough, apparently."

Another long silence passed between them. No brilliant deductions or sudden epiphanies came to either woman.

Finally, Valerie spoke. "I think you're right about Aster's soulless state being a qualifier, but there has to be something more to it. If a lack of a clearly defined soul was all that was needed, then soul fragments could be sitting in tin cans and televisions, or even in bits of air for all we know. There has to be something we're not seeing."

"The obvious, obviously," Kuroneko said with a humorless smirk.

Valerie glanced at her oddly, then shrugged it off.

"Okay," said the cat-girl, "how's this for a leap of faith: what if they're all people? People that Adrian knew, and was close to?"

The healer considered this. "Given how well-travelled he was, that doesn't narrow our target market by much. And even if we just started with people in the Library, that presents its own set of obstacles. Not the least of which being that the first person I can think of is—"

"—Tash," they said simultaneously.

"And we can't let her know until we're certain we can pull this off," the empath finished.

"Well," Kuroneko tried again, "who else can we think of that Adrian was especially close to? You, and me, and Aster, and Michael—"

"—And Ossa, and Chrys, and Emily, and Marcus, and Tyler, and Phoenixia—"

"I think we can safely rule out Phoenixia," Kuroneko chuckled.

Valerie rolled her eyes slightly. "Regardless, even within the Library's walls, there are dozens of people Adrian was close to."

The cat-girl responded with a light shove in the arm. "_Obviously_ a close friendship is not the only qualification. Something about Aster pulled that fragment in, and we decided it was the fact that she was, ah... _vacant_. Hosts for other pieces must have something about them too. We just need to look at this one step at a time."

_One step at a time..._ Valerie found herself thinking back to the previous night's dream... vision... thing. It really was more of a memory than anything else, but something had _instigated_ it, and she wanted to know what it was.

"Is individually checking our agents _really_ the only thing we can do here?" she asked.

Kuroneko sighed. "It's better than doing nothing."

_Touche..._

After a moment, Valerie spoke up again. "Let's test Michael first."

Kuroneko tilted her head. "Any particular reason why?"

_"That's a good question." He looked at her sharply. "How do you think I do it?"_

"Just a feeling I have."

-o-

Before anything else, Valerie had, with permission, delved into Kuroneko's mind to see if a fragment was hiding there. No such luck, unfortunately, but as they made their way to the training rooms where Michael usually was at this time of day, the two women ran into a problem with their plan: how to get Michael to allow Valerie to probe his mind without explaining everything to him.

"Y'know," the cat-girl said softly, "it'd be easier if we could just get Danielle to look at these guys..."

"If it were that simple, don't you think I'd have called her back down by now?" Valerie retorted. "She said herself that soul fragments are burried deep in their host's mind. The only reason she could see it on Aster was because Aster didn't have a soul of her own to conflict with it." _Which is probably why Aster reacted to it so badly_, the empath mused. _It's like living for months on bland oatmeal and then suddenly be given sugar. Good or bad, the reaction will be strong._ "I have no doubt that Danielle's been scanning every person she comes across just to find out what it is that we're hiding," she continued, "but since she hasn't come to us with any new information, one can assume either that there's no one else in the Library with a soul piece, or that she can't see fragments in people who already have souls of their own. She might be able to confirm the existance of fragments if I went in and found them first, but—"

"But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Kuroneko sighed. "Sheesh, your brand of magick comes with some picky rules, doesn't it?"

"Not so much 'rules' as 'moral guidelines that would render my powers moot if I didn't follow them'," Valerie deadpanned. "And I maintain my earlier protest: I will not, should not, _can_not enter a person's mind on a lie. It's just not possible."

The cat-girl pondered this for a moment. "Well... they all trust you here, right? If you said you _couldn't_ tell them why it was necessary, they'd still let you do it?"

The healer glared at her. "That's just lying by omission."

Kuroneko crossed her arms and glared right back. "Time to get your priorities straight, Valerie."

"No, it's not that—normally I have no problems with lying for a good cause. It's just that intention has _power_ when you're inside someone's mind—"

"I _know_ that," Kuroneko interrupted. "I've lived a lot longer than you, healer-girl; I _know_ my noetic psychophisics. But that doesn't change the fact that we have a job to do."

_It's just like with Danielle, Valerie_, Ari offered. _You _will_ tell him eventually, regardless of the outcome. Right now you're not lying to him, you're just asking him to trust you. And it's not even that you're doing anything dangerous that _requires_ that trust; it's just a routine probe..._

The empath bit her lip, obviously conflicted. _He... He'll want to tell Tash if he finds out. I _know_ him, Ari, and he cannot, will not _ever_ keep something from her._

It took a long time for her guardian to reply. _Valerie..._ she said finally. _You can either be afraid of making the wrong choice and _never_ make the right one, or you can risk being wrong and have a chance of being right._

Kuroneko watched Valerie as she weighed her options. The girl was an open book most of the time, and it was painfully obvious how hard she was thinking. Hell, just by interacting with her over the past month, the cat-girl had learned quite a bit about the Society healer's motives—possibly more than she wanted to.

Finally, without a word, Valerie hopped the low fence surrounding the salle and approached Michael, signalling him of her presence before she got within reach of his rapidly-swinging sword. Kuroneko hopped the fence as well, but did not follow her, merely leaning against a post and watching the two from a distance.

Michael saw the healer approach with a grim expression on her face, and lowered his weapon as she drew near. "Michael," she said when she reached him, "Can I speak with you? Privately, I mean?"

"Uh, sure," he said, wondering what this was about. He looked around briefly, and then pointed to a secluded corner of the training area. "Over there okay?"

"That's fine," she said quickly, and began walking briskly toward the indicated corner, checking occassionally to see if Michael was following.

"You alright?" he asked when they got there. "You look like you've seen a ghost or something."

"Fine," she said. And it was true, mostly. "I just... I need your permission to enter your mind."

He frowned. Permission for that wasn't given lightly, particularly when he had secrets of his own. "What for?"

"I can't tell you what for. You just have to trust me. I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't a matter of the utmost importance."

Michael's frown became one of concern rather than suspicion. "Am I sick or something?" Maybe this was the reason the Darkness had vanished. But how could Valerie have known about that? He hadn't told anyone, not even Claire...

Valerie shook her head. "It's nothing to do with you. I'm just looking for something, and you might not know you have it." At his further look of mistrust, she added, "You have my word as a healer that I will not touch anything that's not strictly related to my search, that everything that happens therein will be strictly confidential, _and_ that the procedure will not harm you in any way."

He considered it for a moment, but it didn't take that long. He knew the healer well enough that she didn't go poking around in other people's heads on a whim. That, plus the general nervousness still on her face, told him that she was quite serious about this, that she really _needed_ this from him. "Alright," he said.

The empath released a tense breath she didn't know she'd been holding. "Wonderful," she said. She then loosely held a hand at about eye level and bowed her head. "Just relax and try not to think of anything in particular. I don't want any biased results..."

He did so, and Valerie slid in a gentle probe, meeting almost none of the resistance that was common to most psychic readings. _Of course..._ she remembered. _Michael's already used to the Darkness' presence in his mind; he knows what a mental probe feels like._

Although, if that was the case, then shouldn't said Darkness have had something to say about her presence by now?

Putting the question aside for now, Valerie continued her exploration. As a fighter, Michael's mind was organized, but only selectively. Thoughts of romance, friendships, and stories were carefully piled into one half, while weapons, strategy, and the light floated haphazardly around in the other half. There were other sections as well, but a clear path divided these two, indicative of Michael's priorities.

_He's random_, Valerie thought with a smile, _but not harmfully so. Not a prodigy at any single talent, but puts his all into whatever he sets his mind to and improves anyway. He's also a much better person than he gives himself credit for..._

Glancing around, she started to wonder where she should start looking—she had, after all, only found Aster's piece by accident—but suddenly there was no need. Directly in front of her, straddled directly across the dividing line between love and war, was a curious and familiar warmth. As she drew closer, she began to "see" it as well as feel it. It glowed in a curious shade of violet and pulsated as though alive, radiating with fighting spirit.

Off to the left, another tug drew Valerie's attention. Outwardly, she grimaced in concentration. _Ari!_

_This way!_

The path appeared before her, lit with purple and paved with hunter green. She touched the violet glow briefly, then dove headlong into the dark.

She was unconcious before she hit the ground.

-o-

"Val! Valerie!" Michael shook the healer with increasing panic. He looked around frantically for someone, anyone, but the salle was empty; almost all of the other serious fighters in the Society's ranks lived in different time zones in Real Life, and thus operated on different schedules.

Suddenly, he saw an older woman approaching him—Kuroneko, he remembered. One of the Counter Guardians.

"What did you do?" she demanded. In the back of his mind, Michael was vaguely surprised to see her look worried—the expression didn't seem to belong on her face, almost.

"I don't know!" he cried. "She just collapsed right in front of me!"

Kuroneko made to lift Valerie up into a sitting position, but a loud hiss interrupted her. There, only semi-visible but definitely solid, was Ari. The little dragon crouched on the empath's chest, her wings flared a bit and her head held low. The message was clear: _Do not disturb._

* * *

"_It's your move. Are you just going to stand there?"_

_Valerie started at the sound of the voice and glanced around. She was standing in one of the reading rooms of the Library, but all the couches and tables were pushed to the sides, leaving a large clear space in the center of the room. A glance upwards revealed that the ceiling of the room was missing, leaving but a large white expanse._

_A weight registered on her arm and she glanced down, blinking in slight surprise as she saw a duel disk strapped to her forearm and a hand of five cards in her hand. "So we're dueling this time?"_

"_Well, it's either that or you're practicing being a statue…" An amused voice drawled from across the room._

_The healer lifted her head, surprise registering on her face as she saw who it was. "Adrian?"_

"_No, it's Johnny Depp with his hair dyed white." The Librarian was standing across from her, dressed in a fiery-red trenchcoat with a duel disk strapped to his own arm and a glimmer of mirth in his eyes. "Now, are you going to make your move or not? You just sort of froze up after drawing for the start of your turn..."_

"_What? Oh, yeah..." Despite feeling a bit strange about situation, Valerie felt something nudging her to play it out. _It couldn't hurt..._ Lifting her left arm, she realized that neither she nor Adrian had any cards in play at all, while his life points stood at 5000 and her own at 3400. _That's odd….did we clear the field somehow?

_She glanced down at her hand. _Crystal Beast—Sapphire Pegasus, Crystal Beast—Ruby Carbuncle, Crystal Rageki, Graceful Charity and Rare Value... I could summon my Pegasus and attack him directly, but that doesn't seem to be the right move for some reason...

_Then she remembered that she had the other five Crystal Beast monsters in her graveyard already and grabbed the magic card from her hand. "I activate Graceful Charity, drawing three cards from my and then discarding two!" She quickly pulled the three cards free and looked the over. _Swords of Revealing Light, Waboku..._ Her eyes widened at the third card. _Wait a minute, Rainbow Dragon? Wasn't it supposed to be Prime Material Dragon I drew on that turn?

_However, despite her misgivings, the vision moved forward with or without her consent. Valerie grabbed the other two monsters in her hand. "I discard Crystal Beast__—__Sapphire Pegasus and Ruby Carbuncle from my hand!" Slipping them into the graveyard, she grabbed the last monster in her hand. "Because all seven Crystal Beasts are in my graveyard, I can special summon Rainbow Dragon!" A pillar of light rose up behind her and a massive white serpentine dragon rose up behind her, a bladed horn on its head and seven gem stones of various colors along its body. (4000/0) "Attack his life points directly!"_

_Adrian just smirked as the dragon reared back and the gemstones on its body glowed as it fire a blazing beam of light form it's maw. "When I'm attacked directly, I can special summon Legendary Hero__—__Kuriboh to the field to intercept the attack!" A little brown puffball wearing a cape emblazoned appeared with a big 'H' appeared in front of the Librarian with a pose, only to be incinerated by the attack. "So my life points are safe this round."_

"_Fine…" Val sighed slightly. _I remember this duel now_, she thought inwardly._ Adrian blocked my attack with his Legendary Hero—Kuriboh, but I definitely attacked him with Sapphire Pegasus, not Rainbow Dragon... _She glanced up at the beast. _So why do I have this card now?_ "End turn."_

_Adrian smiled as he drew his next card. "Rainbow Dragon is indeed a powerful monster, but it's balanced out by its summoning conditions, I think. You need all the pieces in order to make it work." His smile became a wry smirk, and he tossed a card onto his disk. "For my turn, I summon Phoenix Swordmistriss!" With a burst of flame, a blonde-haired warrior wielding a fire-orange blade appeared, dressed in phoenix-shaped armor colored rich reds and golds, her blue eyes burning with life while a pair of wings of pure flame flapped on her back. (1900/1200)_

_Valerie's eyes went very wide, and not just because of the monster's impressive appearance and stats._

_"You knew this was coming, right?" Adrian said softly as the Swordmistress' hair billowed gently in a nonexistant breeze. "You knew you'd have to face her at some point."_

_"There was nothing I could have done," the healer replied in a heavy voice. "You went in alone and knocked out anyone who tried to follow you. There was nothing anyone could have done to prevent what happened."_

_He smirked slightly, but the humor did not quite reach his eyes. "Didn't stop you from blaming yourself, now did it? Tell me, Valerie: how much of your identity is wrapped up in your purpose?" He looked her directly in the eye. "And how much of that identity was shattered the day you found yourself unable to fulfill that purpose?"_

_The empath was silent for a moment; her duel disk hung forgotten on her arm. "Survivor's guilt plagued all of us," she said finally. "What matters now is that there _is_ something I can do, if you'll let me."_

_"You mean if you let yourself."_

_Valerie looked up. "What...?"_

_"I play the magic card Soul Shattering!" Adrian lifted his hand, and a good-sized violet gemstone appeared in front of him. "This card's effect lets me pay Life Points in increments of 1000 to power up a monster or monsters by that amount. For this turn, I pay 3000 points." The gemstone cracked and shattered into five equal pieces. Each piece hovered over one of the monster card zones on Adrian's side of the field, and the one above the Phoenix Swordmistress abruptly dissolved into motes of light, which were subsequently absorbed by the warrior. (1900/1200__—3900/1200)_

_Rainbow Dragon was stronger still, but Phoenix Swordmistress had an effect of her own—she gained 100 ATK whenever she attacked. And without waiting for a command, the warrior lifted her burning sword and took flight..._

_"Valerie," Adrian whispered in the curious silence, "You already know what you're looking for. All you need to do is find it."_

_The warrior and dragon clashed in midair, and Valerie threw up her arms to shield her eyes from the resulting light._

* * *

Valerie opened her eyes slowly, suddenly concious of several things all at once: the dirt under her back, the two pairs of eyes peering into her face, the invisible weight in her lap, the tears running down her face...

"Oh, God..." she whispered, pained to her core.

"Val, what's wrong?" Michael asked, clearly frantic.

Kuroneko, however, was more pragmatic. "Does he have it?"

The healer nodded. "He has it... And so does Tash."

* * *

**AN:** You all saw that coming, right? =P Don't forget: long reviews make the writing go faster!


	3. Fire

**AN:** So SO sorry for the wait, guys. Summer is always a somewhat busy time for my family, particularly in the beginning—always lots of activities planned. However, even if I didn't have that for an excuse, the simple fact remains that this chapter was weirdly hard for me. I have no idea why, but I just could not get my thoughts onto paper for this one. Even now, parts of it need work, but I honestly could not make it any better than this. _-bows in appology-_ Gomen, mina-san. Aaaand I'll shut up now before I sound even more wapanese than I already am. ^^U

As for the scene with Phoenixia... I've stopped trying to make sense of the continuity. That's what you get with a multi-author series, I suppose. XD

**Disclaimer:** All I own is Valerie and her team. The first dreamsequence was written by MotL and edited by me, but the second one is one hundred percent mine, save for the description of the sword.

* * *

_"And you seem to break like time.  
__So fragile on the inside, you climb these grapvines.  
__Would you look now unto the pit of me on the ground?  
__And you wander through these to climb these grapevines."  
_—Globus, "Orchard of Mines"

* * *

"Tash?" Michael asked. "What are you talking about? Has _what_?"

Valerie simply pulled her knees up to her chest. "What I've been looking for ever since Adrian died."

The Chief Agent frowned and looked like he was about to question her further, when a loud explosion sent all three of them ducking for cover. Now, normally loud explosions are commonplace in the Library Arcanium—between Tyler's insanity, Aster's fourth-wall breaking, and Ben's nukes, it wasn't hard to see why—but this one somehow felt more ominous than usual, particularly since they had all felt the analytical light of a Plot Device pass through them. That in itself was never a good sign.

Kuroneko's cat-reflexes sent her rolling back up to her feet even as she fell, and Michael wasn't far behind her. "The hell _was_ that?" he yelled over the din, taking off for the corridors at a sprint. Almost as an afterthought, he slid to a halt and looked back at Valerie, who was hoisting herself back up with a nearby railing. Ari had already vanished to who knows where.

Kuroneko's ears twitched, hearing detail as the humans could never hope to. Her head tilted to one side, partly in confusion, partly in surprise. "Are those... Daleks?"

Valerie had never heard the term before, but apparently Michael had, and his eyes widened in horror. "Shit... Valerie, get to the med ward and wait for further orders," he barked. "I'm gonna go find out what happened."

The healer grit her teeth and nodded, knowing what he meant by "further orders". She would have some explaining to do later, to all of them.

Until then, all she could do was hope everyone was safe, and pray to whatever gods were listening that her and Kuroneko's plan was possible.

* * *

_Insert the second half of "Insert Cro Magnon Civilisation Here" and most of "Insert Random Distraction Here" here_.

* * *

Tash seemed alright for the moment, although with Daleks, Weeping Angels, and lord knew what else running around the Library, "for the moment" might not be too long a time. Harriet had been positively frantic when she carried the paralyzed Librarian into the medical wing, Michael almost more so when he arrived from the fray outside about twenty minutes later. Valerie and Phoenixia had administered the antidote to the datura immediately, so the blonde leader's temperature had lowered to a more reasonable level, but her heart rate remained elevated and her respiratory rate had gone up by quite a bit. The drug's paralytic effects were wearing off, but the increase in breathing suggested that Tash was still halucinating—and the dreams weren't pleasant if her heart rate was any indication.

"I don't care what you have to do," Harriet said as she holstered a few grenades and picked up her cricket bat threateningly. "Just make her better." And with that the Founder left the sick bay and marched out into the brawl.

Valerie looked around. Other than the sleeping Tash, she was alone. Michael and Phoenixia were already long gone; like their esteemed Founder, they too knew where their talents lay during a combat emergency, and it wasn't in dutifully holding the hand of an unconcious woman. Valerie, though she was picking up new tricks rapidly, knew herself to be no warrior, and so concentrated her efforts on what she _did_ know.

The healer sat down next to Tash's bed and made herself comfortable. She did not bother with any sort of gesture to aid her concentration; after nearly three years of working together, eating together, laughing and crying together, Valerie knew the Leader's mind quite well.

_Please..._ she prayed. _Please, let me be right..._

-o-

Valerie was struck with a sudden sense of deja vu—in its current state, Tash's mind was remarkably similar to Aster's when she had dived into it... was it really only yesterday? Except this time it was more like a hurricane: impenetrable chaos surrounding a small island of calm, and inside that calm, something incredible was happening.

She could see the hallucination the Librarian was under, and it wasn't pretty. Valerie couldn't suppress a wince when she saw... well, _Valerie_... get slashed acrost the front and land in a mangled pile across the spacious room, but weirdly, she was morbidly facinated. There was something decidedly disorienting about watching yourself, even an illusion of yourself, be murdered.

Then other agents in the dream began dropping, and Valerie began to feel sickened. _Okay_, she thought, slightly nauseated, _Where's the pause button on this thing?_

Abruptly, her conciousness pulled away from the dream—still within Tash's mind, but not so deep a part of it. She now saw the hallucination as it was: a function of the mind induced by drugs and powered by the Librarian's fears. But from such an outside point of view, she also saw something else.

_That's it, isn't it?_ she asked. Ari gave no response, but the healer didn't need one. The identity of the enormous mass of brilliant violet energy that encompassed the illusion in a manner that looked achingly like a comforting hug, was obvious.

The pathway was paved with firey crimson this time, the reasons for which were pretty obvious. Valerie followed along it, neither hurried nor slow.

Back inside the dream, Valerie thought she felt a different kind of tears. Or maybe that was just her.

* * *

_"Who are you?" she immediately demanded._

_Adrian gave her an odd little smile and began walking in circles around her. "Who do you want me to be?"_

_Valerie rolled her eyes, exasperated before they even began. "What _is_ it with mental hallucinations and their refusal to give a straight frikking answer?"_

_The man before her chuckled a bit. "If you don't feel like thinking about it, just take a guess."_

_She sighed and decided to play along. "You're me," she said at last. "Some part of me trying to tell me something I've missed and it's simply looking like you because it drives the point home that I'm missing something, since I miss Adrian and he's dead."_

"_Good theory." He nodded approvingly. "It's logical and founded on your own experiences and knowledge about things like this. But it's still inaccurate." The circling stopped and he faced her again, hands clasped in front of himself as he regarded her. "Care to try again?_

_She folded her arms and glared at him. "We could cut out all this and you could just tell me."_

"_We could." The Not-Adrian agreed. "But you won't gain anything from that." He smiled suddenly. "Think of it like pieces to a puzzle. Find enough of them and you'll able to see the whole picture without having them all." _

"_Why a puzzle? And what are the pieces?"_

"_To your first, why not a puzzle, and to the second..." The smile did not leave. "You've already met all of the pieces, there's no need for me to elaborate on that."_

_Her eyes went wide. "So they _are_ people! Who are they? How many__—?"_

"_Let me ask you something," he interrupted, clasping his arms behind his back and pacing in front of her. "What is your purpose?"_

_The healer gave him a look, but got the feeling he wouldn't continue unless she answered. So she shrugged. "It depends on the moment, really. Life changes from one second to the next and so do goals and purposes and reasons for doing things."_

_Another nod. "Another good answer. Do you believe that our purpose changes from person to person? That is to say, when we meet or see someone, we give ourselves a different purpose for that person? Such as protecting them or giving them a hug or helping them?"_

"_Of course."_

"_Okay." He paused in pacing to look at her. "What is Adrian's purpose to the Society?"_

_She didn't even need a second's thought. "To protect and train us, give us an HQ, teach, help us__—__all manner of things along that line."_

"_Does this purpose change from Agent to Agent?"_

"_Obviously. To love us, most of all Tash. To teach and train and fight, people like Michael and Ossa." A slight frown. "What purpose does asking me this have?"_

"_It's a clue. Or at least, it's about to be one." He rocked on his heels a bit. "But since you're in the mood for something a little more literal, I'll close with a riddle._

_Valerie twitched slightly. "I think you may have a different definition of _literal_ than I do..."_

_He responded with a wry smirk. "It's still more straightforward than waiting for you to notice bits of scenery in old memories." He laughed a bit. "You already know everything you need to. It's just a matter of remembering that you know it. You _all_ have that problem, really, but that's for another time..."_

_"If I already know, then just tell me!"_

_He glanced at her. "If you wanted me to 'just tell you', you'd have remebered it by now. So, my final question... who do you know who has decided that their purpose is to shield the sword?"_

"_Shield the sword…" Valerie scowled at him. "What kind of clue is that?"_

_He laughed. "A very excellent one, thank you very much, especially if you've been paying attention to Real World changes. Now put that lovely brain of your's to work already!"_

* * *

At the end of the day, nearly everyone had gone to sleep early, even those who operated in different time zones. It had been an exhausting day, and by the time the last of the Dr. Who villains were defeated and sent back to their own fandom, it was a rare soul that could even think about remaining upright any longer than the trip to their quarters. Only Michael and a handful of other agents were still up, making one last check around the Library. No one was taking any chances that there might be remnants of this, their second full-scale invasion.

Valerie remained in the med ward with Tash, even though the Library had moved her bedroom right across the hall from it (moving entire rooms was commomplace, apparently). Harriet was still gone without a trace (off to investigate gay Turkish pirates, apparently), and Phoenixia had gone to her own quarters once she was satisfied that the Librarian was out from under the effects of the datura drug. Valerie was exhausted herself—most of the Library's occupants had passed through the med ward for a once over after the fighting was done—but she couldn't sleep.

She could be wrong. She could be devestatingly wrong. Even if it was possible to find every last piece of Adrian's soul, there was no guarantee she could fuse them back together, or even that the body would accept them. Hunch or no hunch, there wasn't even a guarantee that the number of pieces was even calculable. They were in completely uncharted territory here, and that was a lot of pressure for one healer girl to carry.

However, if Valerie's fear of failure in this venture was great, it was surpassed and eclipsed by her fear of her friends' reactions to her secrecy. She had her reasons for keeping it to herself, very good reasons, but at the same time she had known from the beginning that they would not take well to being left in the dark. By now, however, it was moot point. Michael knew she was up to something, and she had already resolved to tell both him and Tash everything.

As though summoned by her thoughts (an idea Valerie thought quite possible, as it happened to her a lot), the Chief Agent himself stormed in, looking weary and irritated as he slammed the door behind him. "...don't even _have_ a Youtube account..."

Tash stirred from her sleep at the sound, moving to cover her head with the blankets. "Bloody hell, Michael..." she whined.

Michael's cheeks turned pink. "S-Sorry. The lights were on, and I thought—"

"I was awake," Valerie explained.

The Chief Agent's gaze rested on her. "Right..." he said slowly. "I've been meaning to ask you..."

"I've been meaning to tell you," the healer interrupted. She glanced at Tash. "Both of you, actually, so Tash, could you stay awake for this? It's kind of important."

Tash sat up and stretched a bit. "I'm already awake now, I guess." She yawned broadly, and then smiled. "What's up?"

Valerie took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying to ignore the pounding in her ears.

"Kuroneko and I found Adrian's body, and there might be a way to bring him back to life."

She had expected the stunned silence to follow. She had expected the looks of shock and disbelief on her superiors' faces. She had even anticipated the way Tash reeled back as though struck.

That didn't make it hurt any less.

"How?" said Michael.

The empath looked at him. "What?"

"How do you plan to bring him back?"

"We think his soul was broken into pieces before he died, and that the pieces got scattered around. If they're all brought back together in his body, he should wake up again."

"How many pieces are there?"

"I don't know."

"But you have found some of them." It wasn't a question.

Valerie nodded. "So far they've all found shelter in the minds of people Adrian was close to. Aster was one, and so are you two."

"How do you plan to put the pieces back together?"

"I don't know. That's what Kuroneko's been researching, so she—"

"Where did you find Adrian's body?"

For the next hour and a half, Michael grilled Valerie with every possible question he could think of on the situation, not making a single expression all the while. Valerie, meanwhile, was somewhat surprised to find that the answer to more than half of his questions was "I don't know." That thought made her quite apprehensive as the night wore on; no matter where you went, ressurection was a delicate operation (at least without some kind of divine interference). What chance could they possibly have of success, if there was so much that she simply did not know?

It wasn't until the end, when Michael was finding it harder to think of new questions, that Tash finally said something.

"Take me to him."

Both of the others in the room paused and looked at their Librarian.

"Take me to Adrian," she said softly.

An array of different expressions flitted across Michael's face, but he said nothing; instead, he looked down at the empath, who's face was completely unreadable.

In an even quieter voice, Valerie replied, "No."

Tash's featured scrunched up in anger as she sat up. "I want to see him, Valerie!"

"Tash, please understand. I asked Kuroneko the same exact thing when she first told me where he was. I've only seen him once, but even that was one time too many." She looked at her superior with unshed tears behind her eyes. "He's dead, Tash. There's an incredibly slim chance that we could do something to change that fact, but for the forseeable future, he. Is. _Dead_." Valerie looked away and gripped the obsidian pendant under her shirt—her own emotions were hard enough to contain. "No one deserves to see that..." she whispered.

The Librarian swallowed, her resolve like molten steel. "I don't need to be protected, Valerie. Moreover, I'm still the Librarian. If I want to see Adrian, then you can't stop me."

"No," Valerie retorted angrily, "Nobody can stop you from doing what you want, not even yourself sometimes! But don't think for a second that it's _only_ you I'm protecting! I saw my dead friend once, and it tore me apart inside—and I'm not even in love with him! Do you think I want to feel that pain again, ten-fold, through you?"

There was a long silence as the two women glared at each other. Michael looked like he wanted to say something, but was torn between his loyalty to his sister and his agreement with the healer's sense.

"I-I need to be alone for a while," Tash finally said in a shaking voice.

Valerie and Michael both stood up.

"No," she said. "I need to leave. I need to be somewhere else." The Librarian slowly stood up and made for the door on legs that shook more than her voice. Strictly speaking, she shouldn't be up and about just yet, but Valerie didn't have it in her to stop her.

When Tash leaned on the door handle for support as she opened it and began to exit the room, Valerie couldn't take it anymore. "Ask Kuroneko to take you if you really want to see. I don't want you to do this, but I can't stop you if you really feel you must. It's your choi—"

The Librarian whipped around to glare at her friend. "When you issue orders for the mental health of your patient, you need to be a little more firm than that," she said coldly. Without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and slammed the door behind her.

Michael rose from his seat and left as well, and Valerie made no attempt to stop him. All too often, people in pain _wanted_ to be followed, no matter what they said. If Tash needed someone with her, he'd be there, and if she wanted to be alone, he'd leave.

Valerie _herself_ often wished that someone would follow her, but this was the life she chose. She made the hard decisions so that others wouldn't have to, and told people what they needed to hear instead of what they wanted.

-o-

"_None_ of them?"

"Not one."

Kuroneko began pacing as Valerie massaged her temples. It had been a hell of a day. "Did you check the Marcuses individually _and_ together?" the catgirl asked.

"Yep."

"The Counter Guardians? Wanderers?"

"All those who had encounters with Adrian, yes."

"What about Phoenixia? I know she didn't get a proper body until _after_ Adrian died, but—"

"Been there, done that," Valerie interjected. "Phoenixia's mind is connected to Adrian's on a fundamental level, but computers aren't built to house human souls. Not in the way we're thinking of anyway." The healer pinched the bridge of her nose. "I even went so far as to hunt down _Blake_, of all people. It took some persuading to get him to let me inside his head, but no dice. He didn't have one either."

With both Michael and Tash backing her jurisdiction, Valerie had been able to extend her search for soul pieces far and wide. The remaining Society Leaders plus a handful of Counter Guardians had been informed of the situation, as well as Danielle and Phoenixia—the former because she had been promised information and was useful to the search, and the latter because there was really no keeping anything secret from her—but it still fell to Valerie to do most of the leg work. In the past two days, virtually every inhabitant of the Library Arcanium had had their minds scanned for Adrian's aura, but to no avail. They were running out of options here.

Kuroneko drummed her fingers. "Maybe there aren't any more to find," she suggested. "Maybe three pieces is all there was."

Valerie shook her head. "I asked Danielle about that this morning. There's still a good-sized chunk missing, from what she can tell." The healer stood up, wobbled a bit, and regained balance. It really _had_ been a hell of a day. "I don't know about you, but I'm running out of ideas."

"You're also running out of steam," the catgirl pointed out. "So I'm going to give you an _excellent_ idea: get at least twelve hours' sleep and a giant pancake breakfast, and we'll get back to this when you're ready."

The healer chuckled, but didn't have the energy to argue. "Better knock that off, Kuroneko," she said, "or people will start thinking you actually care."

-o-

On her way up, she found Phoenixia milling around outside the med ward, looking a little lost. Valerie wondered if she had been sleepwalking, which had been a problem with her recently. "Can I help you with something?" she asked.

Phoenixia turned toward her and smiled. "I was just wondering how everything was going. You haven't been on the computers for a while now, and I was getting curious about your progress."

Valerie chuckled. Phoenixia had apparently known all along what the healer was up to all these months—as noted many times by various agents, there was simply no keeping secrets from her, and it was a waste of effort to even try. "To be honest," she admitted, "we're running out of places to look. I mean, I could try re-writing that search engine I was using before, but I doubt it'd do much good, what with natural variations between different soul pieces... It's like searching for something, but you don't even know what it looks like."

"I can do that for you, if you'd like," the woman offered. "It's complicated, but I could probably do it faster than you."

"That'd be helpful, yeah," Valerie smiled. "Although, now that you mention it, how come you never said anything to me before, if you knew what I was doing?"

Phoenixia shrugged. "He was dead, Valerie. I _knew_ he was dead, and if anyone would know that for a fact, it's me. Never in a million years did I think you might actually _find_ anything..."

Valerie pondered that for a moment. "To tell you the truth, I didn't know what I was looking for myself. All I knew was that he couldn't be dead, because I could still sense him there, just like when he was alive."

"I thought I could sense him anywhere, but maybe not..." She trailed off, then looked sharply at the healer. "Do you think I have a soul?" she asked suddenly.

Valerie blinked, somewhat surprised at the sudden question, and then chuckled quietly. "With all the research I've been doing on the subject, I could go on all day about the logistics of that question alone, never mind the answer." She smiled. "And I could also go on all day about why the answer to your question is _yes_, even though I know why you're asking me."

"I have a body now, but all I really am is a machine," Phoenixia said softly. "An accidental file, a mistake in programming. Computers can think, but they can't _imagine_. They can't make something out of nothing, they can only do what their programming allows."

The empath smiled. "Phoenixia, I have a firsthand account from Terrie that you are _much_ more than a program—"

"I live _through_ him, Valerie!"

Both of them were silent for a moment, equally confused by the ex-hologram's sudden emotional state. Phoenixia wasn't prone to sudden bouts of existentialism, at least from what Valerie knew. But then again, what _did_ she know? With a slight raising and lowering of her eyebrows, the healer opened the wide double-doors to the med ward and stepped inside. "Adrian's dead, Phoenixia," she said.

Phoenixia followed her friend in at her motion. "I know, and—"

"And you're still here. What does that say about your own autonomy?"

The ex-hologram stopped dead in her tracks.

Valerie put her hand on her friend's shoulder with a gentle smile. "You forget: I've been inside your head. Is that what brought this on?" she asked. "My looking for pieces of Adrian's soul? Trust me when I say that you are one hundred percent your own person, Phoenixia. It's true that computers aren't quite compatible with the kind of soul you're talking about—in one sense, they don't think in the way that's necessary, and in another sense, they think entirely too much. But the main problem is that everything a computer _is_ is static and unchanging, and the nature of a soul _is_ continuous change. _You_, Phoenixia, have been fluid and creative and utterly _human_ for as long as I've known you, hologram or not. Maybe you _started_ as an extension of Adrian, but in time you broke off and became your own person in _spite_ of living in a computer—a fact that, given your personality, doesn't surprise me in the least." She grinned.

Phoenixia simply stared at the healer with the oddest look on her face.

"What?" Valerie asked, confused.

"It's just that... I never believed Adrian and Tash when they told me about your lectures, but they really _do_ work."

There was a faint sound of crickets chirping... and then both of them burst out laughing.

"Well it's not like I come out with them on purpose!" Valerie said with an amused grin. "Irrefutable logic just spews from my lips whether I like it or not!"

"That's the other thing I didn't believe," Phoenixia giggled, "That when you get into that 'mode' of your's, you don't even realize you're making a speech."

Valerie rolled her eyes "Well I've been ordered to get some sleep, so I'm probably done with speeches for the day." She eyed the older woman. "You _are_ feeling better now, right?"

"Mhmm," Phoenixia nodded. "And I've got a mission to get to, so I'll catch you later." She waved as she trotted out of the ward's doors and down the hallway.

Valerie smiled and shook her head. Phoenixia was a vibrant woman; it took a great deal to shake her, but the slightest nudge in the proper direction could put her back on the right path, even though she would never truely forget her doubts. _Sounds like someone I know_, Ari interjected with a small mental smirk.

_Oh, hush you_, the empath replied.

_It's true though!_ the guardian protested. _And goodness knows you _could_ go on all day about the dynamic nature of the Soul. Constantly flowing and changing..._

_Minute to minute and second to second_, Valerie confirmed as she entered her own quarters through the back door in the med ward. _And the changes are so subtle and rapid that, most of the time, the person in question doesn't even realize it._ She flopped onto the bed, exhausted, and let her mind wander. _Changes... and rigidity versus fluidity... How fast do you suppose one person could change without realizing it?_

Ari didn't answer, and Valerie thought of Tash's reaction to her little "revelation" a day and a half earlier. The Leader had changed since Adrian's death, to be certain, but so had she. Both of them had been overworking themselves to avoid thinking too much. Tash refused much of her sleep for fear of nightmares, but with all the thinking and meditating she'd been doing, Valerie found she could barely sleep at all. Tash put all of herself into her job, her friends, her duty, in order to hang on to the remainder of those she loved with all her heart. Valerie, though it sometimes tore her apart inside, protected the protector, and kept her from going places she'd regret.

_"Whose purpose is to shield the sword?"_

Abruptly she sat up, eyes like golden saucers. "Th-that's not possible. It _couldn't_ be..." She couldn't even finish the statement.

_"How much of your identity is wrapped up in your purpose?"_

Ari was conspicuously nowhere to be found, hiding in the back of her mind as though waiting for the thought process to come to its conclusion.

_"What's the answer, Valerie?"_

Valerie laid back down and closed her eyes, pouring all her excess energy into her forebrain and launching her conciousness into a meditative trance.

* * *

_"Back again, I see." He didn't look up at her as he said this; he was busy cleaning _Hoshikuzu_'s blade. _

_She locked her gaze onto him. "What am I missing?"_

_"The obvious, of course."_

_Valerie crossed her arms. "I've been wracking my brains trying to think of _any_ other possibilities, but I keep coming up with nothing. Zilch. Nada. There has to be more you're not telling me."_

_He smiled at her. "Oh, I'm sure you'll figure it out. You just need some practice finding your targets." And suddenly they were at the Library's archery range, and _Seiryu_ was active in her hand. Not-Adrian stood and pulled another sword seemingly out of nowhere__. It was slimmer than _Hoshikuzu_, but just as strong, and glimmering with power. The blue, V-shaped guard was shorter than the hilt, with a red stone embedded where the guard, hilt, and blade met. A sapphire decorated the pommel, and the silvery blade pointed straight and true, glinting in the half-light. _

_He flipped the sword over in his hand once and expertly flung it towards the target. It landed with a shuddering halt, point embedded several inches into the wood, dead center._

Dead center_, thought Valerie._ Ha.

_Not-Adrian looked at her, all business. "Try to hit it."_

_She looked back at him, confused. "I don't want to hit it; I'll hurt it."_

_"You might," he nodded sagely. "But you know what they say about 'whatever doesn't kill me...'"_

_"You're a fine one to talk about not getting killed..." Valerie muttered, but turned toward the target range anyway. _

_After a moment's hesitation, she fired off three shots. Every one of them missed, forming a multicolored half-circle around the sword. The first arrow, to the lower left of the sword, turned a vibrant blue when it landed. The second, to the lower right of the sword, a deep, dark green. The third arrow, just above the blue one, became crimson when it hit. With each hit though, the sword in the center shone a little brighter._

_Valerie tilted her head, then looked back at Not-Adrian. "I'm not the type to miss subtle hints like that, y'know."_

_He smirked. "Clearly. But are you the type to miss the blatant ones?"_

_She looked back, and suddenly there were two more arrows on the range, filling in the spaces to complete the circle. One of them, directly across from the red one and a little above the green, was a rosey sort of yellow that pulsated subtly when she watched it._

_The other was white._

* * *

_"To know. To feel. To play me once again.  
__Do you denote from what we feel?  
__Do you not know? I see you play these games.  
__Do you...?"  
_—Globus, "Orchard of Mines"

* * *

**AN:** Anybody figure it out yet? =D We're in the home-stretch now!


	4. Wind

**AN:** Parts of this I like, parts of it I don't like. Either way, it's out now. Almost there, everyone!

Italics between full lines are visions. Italics between my regular breaks (-o-) are flashbacks.

**Disclaimer:** All I own is Valerie and her team.

* * *

_"It gains the more it gives,  
And then it rises with the fall.  
So hand me that remote.__  
Can't you see that all that stuff's a sideshow?_

_Such boundless pleasure  
We've no time for later. Now you__  
Can't await your own arrival. You've__  
Twenty seconds to comply..._

—Frou Frou, "Let Go"

* * *

Valerie awoke from her trance with a shuddering gasp, head reeling, as though someone had thrown cold water over her face. It took her a brief moment to remember where she was, but as soon as she re-oriented herself, Ari appeared before her, existing as a completely solid presence for the first time in months.

"It can't be..." the healer whispered, almost to herself. "It was me all along?"

_The obvious you were missing_, Ari said softly, refusing to meet her eyes. _Everyone had symptoms from playing host to a piece of Adrian's soul—Aster lost her mind. Michael lost his Darkness. Tash thought about him constantly, dreamed about him, even started acting like him. You had visions._ She paused._ You could empathicly feel Adrian no matter where you went, and so you simply weren't capable of believing he was dead when all your senses told you otherwise. The visions were generated so that your conscious mind could access what you instinctually already knew._

"And the empathy itself," Valerie muttered. "Aster drew a piece to herself because she had no soul of her own. Michael and Tash drew theirs because they were so close to him. But I'm an empath—tailor-made to support the extra weight on my mind!" She drew her knees up, fighting tears. "How could I have missed this? How could I have been so _stupid?_" She punctuated the statement with a sharp punch to the bedding beneath her.

Ari sidled up next to her, accompanying the gesture with a mental hug. _Not stupid, Chosen. Merely possessed of an overdeveloped sense of modesty._ The little dragon vanished and reappeared atop Valerie's knees, looking her right in the face. _But the puzzle is nearly solved now._

The healer looked at the clock. It was already the following morning. She eyed her feet in annoyance. "I slept in my shoes..."

Ari chuckled. _That you did._

Valerie rolled her eyes and sighed. _Screw this, I'm wearing flip-flops today_, and kicked off the chafing sneakers. Aloud, she asked. "You wouldn't happen to know where Danielle is, would you?"

_I can go get her if you want._

"Thanks. Actually," she amended, "tell her to find Kuroneko and meet me here in an hour."

_Why the hour?_

Valerie chuckled. _In case you hadn't noticed, my clothes are all rumpled, and I could do with a shower. Besides, I need to think of how I'm gonna make this work._

Ari hesitated a split-second, then nodded. _Of course_.

And the empath was left alone with her thoughts.

-o-

Fifty minutes later, Valerie answered a knock on the door to her quarters, still chewing the last mouthful of pancake (courtesy of the brilliant Society chef). It was Danielle and Kuroneko. Valerie glanced at the clock on the nightstand. "I said an hour."

"Don't look at me," Danielle protested. "Miss Know-It-All over here wanted to find out what you were on about."

"Oh, and I'm sure you _didn't_," Valerie said with a smirk. "But since you're here already, you might as well come in. I'm just cleaning up breakfast."

The two followed the healer in and sat on the bed; Valerie sat on the armchair facing them. "So what's this about?" Kuroneko asked.

Valerie placed her hands in front of her as if she were holding an invisible ball and closed her eyes in concentration. For a moment, nothing happened. Then Danielle's eyes widened as she saw the violet soul energy forming in her friend's hands.

Kuroneko, of course, saw nothing, but she could guess what Danielle was looking at. In fact, she mentally kicked herself for not guessing it in the first place, but there would be time for that later. "Is it enough?" she asked Danielle quietly, so as not to break Valerie's concentration.

The redhead was already forming a mental picture in her mind of what she remembered Adrian's aura to look like, though picturing what it would look like without a body inside it took some stretching of the imagination. She bit her lip. "I'm... not sure..."

Kuroneko glared at her. "'Not _sure_'?"

"Hey," Danielle protested, throwing her hands up in defense, "it's a lot more complicated than I make it seem! That could fit in with the rest of it or it could not. The only way I'd know for sure is if I saw them all together. Actually," she amended, "the only way I'd know for _sure_ is if they were all in Adrian, but as it is—"

"Guys," Valerie interrupted, eyes still shut but her voice sounding strained, "if that's the case, can we just get everyone together in the white room?"

Kuroneko frowned. "What, you mean do it _now_?" she asked. "We still don't know if we have all the pieces yet, much less _how_ this whole thing's going to work."

"Or if we'll get more than one shot at it," Danielle added.

"This thing in my hands has been leading me on this search from the very beginning," Valerie said softly. "I think it's telling me now that it's time to go for it. Besides, I don't know if I can pull it out like this more than once."

-o-

Souls, though incredibly delicate things, are also quite stable in their composition. Because eternal change is integral to its makeup, it tends to regard attacks from external sources as more of that change, and thus adapts and evolves. Much like a person's subconscious mind will include a bell sound in a dream in order to avoid waking up to an alarm clock, a person's soul is often known to take hostile external forces and internalize them in order to maintain balance.

Thus, from the point of view of a soul, there _are_ no external sources. All change comes from within.

Valerie entered the white room feeling as though she had life and death in her hands... and, in a sense, she did. As an empath, her soul took that internalization mechanism to its extreme, to the point where, were she not trained, she would be unable to tell the difference between her own soul and the piece of Adrian's soul in her hands. As a healer, she had the ability to sense the energy fluctuations and ripples within the body, which are, in fact, a perfect mirror of the energy fluctuations within the soul. She could find the places where currents sought to continue but could not, and connect all of the pieces together into a seamless whole.

Kuroneko was right. _Silri_ was right. She was uniquely suited to this task and had been destined for it from the beginning.

It wasn't long before Danielle arrived as well, Tash, Michael, and Aster in tow. Michael and Tash shifted nervously under the room's brilliant glow, though the fae simply looked bewildered, in complete awe of her surroundings.

"The Pillar of Knowledge..." Tash whispered. "So this is where—" She cut off with a gasp as she caught sight of the central crystal structure and the achingly familiar silhouette contained inside. Unconsciously, she took a step towards it.

Michael touched his sister's shoulder. "Leave it, Aneki," he said gently.

Tash visibly shuddered with more pent-up emotion than Valerie would care to put names to, but nodded and stepped back.

Highly aware of everyone's eyes on her, Valerie swallowed, started towards the nearest pillar... and stopped. Furrowing her brow in confusion, she looked around the room, particularly at the five seemingly identical pillars—waist-high, about a foot in diameter, and composed entirely out of what looked like clear crystal, almost as though they had been grown out of the floor. Apart from natural variations, there was really nothing to distinguish one from the other.

_Instinct_, the empath thought to herself. _It's all instinct from here._

So without really paying attention to where she was going, she walked. And then, without any prompting, she stopped, and looked up again. She was on the other side of the room, with the door (though it was difficult to remember where it was when it was closed) completely blocked from her vision by the crystal structure in the center.

_You knew this was coming, right?_

_You already know what you're looking for._

_How much of your identity is wrapped up in your purpose?_

_You're a smart girl. Think on it._

_What's the answer, Valerie? Tell me!_

"This," she said in the barest of whispers, more to herself than anything. "_This_ is the answer."

_Really? Are you a hundred percent on that?_

Valerie squeezed her eyes shut, lifted her hands, and released the energy.

A soft, clear sound, like the hum of running electricity, rose in the air, and she opened her eyes. The piece of Adrian's soul she had held in her hands was gone, but the pillar she had chosen had begun to glow a pure, bright white.

"This... This _is_ it!" she said, suddenly excited. She looked around at the others. "These pillars are here for a reason; they must be to channel the energy back into his body and put all the pieces back together!"

The others glanced around at each other. "But how..." Michael began.

"Tash," Valerie said, striding over to the tall Leader and taking her arm. "Which of the remaining pillars draws you to it? Which is the one that catches your attention most?"

Confused but compliant, Tash glanced between the two nearest pillars, and eventually chose the one on the left, which was nearest to Valerie's white one. Michael, quick on the uptake, immediately started walking towards the pillar opposite her, and Aster shrugged and took the one between the two Leaders.

"Okay," Valerie said to the blonde, "This is going to be the hard part, because I only know how _I_ can do it, not how you can do it... but you need to separate Adrian's soul from your own."

"How the hell do I—right..." she caught herself. "Umm..."

"Just go through meditation exercises until you find something that feels right for it," Danielle suggested from the sidelines. "I'll try and let you know when you're getting it right."

Tash turned nervously towards the pillar and started to imitate Valerie's prior position—with her hands held in front of her as though she was holding an invisible ball—but that felt somehow redundant to her, so instead she aimed herself at the pillar, positioned her hands as though she was warming them near a fire, and bowed her head. Through the strands of long blonde hair that fell into her face, she took one last look at the silhouette encased inside the crystal structure, and closed her eyes.

Tash thought of Adrian and every waking moment they had spent together, from the day they met to that last horrible moment when she _should have_ kissed him and _oh gods, why didn't I give him one last kiss?_ The sex, the discovery, the haunting nightmares, the little thrill that lanced through her every time he told her she was beautiful—and meant it. It all ran through her mind, faster and faster: every moment that was, and every moment that could have been, _should_ have been, _**could still be**__ if I can just get this right_—

A tendril of violet energy curled out from somewhere inside her hands like a tiny flame.

"That's it!" Danielle said excitedly. "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it!"

So she did. With renewed energy and determination, Natasha Marquand brought her love to life in her mind and colored him lovingly with everything she knew: his traits, his quirks, his likes, his dislikes, his habits, his personality, everything she loved to pieces about him and even his flaws but she loved them too. And if Adrian the Librarian thought she was going to just lay back and let him die, then _boy_ did he have another thing coming—

Another sound rose, different from the first one. She opened her eyes.

There was nothing in her hands, though she felt curiously lightheaded... but the pillar before her was pulsing a brilliant crimson, like a heartbeat.

"It's red," Tash said worriedly. She glanced at Valerie. "Is that bad?"

"No..." the healer whispered, eyes wide with wonder. "No, it's _you!_" Her face split open in an ecstatic grin. "It's the part of Adrian that's comprised of nothing but _you!_"

The blonde looked at the pillar, then back to Valerie. "You can tell what it's thinking?"

"Of course not. Souls don't think, they _feel_."

Across the room, Michael had his hands against either side of his own pillar, already more than halfway there. When a third hum of a different tone than the others could be heard, he opened his eyes to see his pillar nearly vibrating with a swirling, dark green color. "God-_damn_, that's one hell of a rush!" He was breathing a little heavily, but grinning.

Valerie's grin grew even wider, and she turned toward Aster. "Ready for your turn?"

"Actually, Valerie-chan," said Aster, raising her hand in the air as if this were a classroom, "I have a question."

Everyone looked at the fae.

"If we're supposed to give Adrian-kun the pieces of his soul back," Aster said, "and these pillars are here to help us do that, then why are there five pillars when there are only four of us?" This was possibly the most lucid statement anyone had ever heard the girl make.

A long silence passed, during which everyone looked at everyone else, but especially Valerie.

Valerie looked at Kuroneko.

Kuroneko looked around at the five pillars—three glowing, two still clear—and then back at Valerie, who was standing near Aster. "If this is a puzzle," she said slowly, almost to herself, "then that doesn't necessarily mean we have to complete it all at once."

Michael frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Just look at Valerie," she said, gesturing to the ashen-faced healer. "She put her piece in and left it alone a good twenty minutes ago while she helped you and Tash put in yours, but her pillar is shining just as brightly as when she left it. If these things don't require constant attention or ritual mumbo-jumbo to keep them in place, then that gives us time to find what ought to be the last piece."

The collective sigh of relief that was released could have uprooted a forest.

"But you searched the entire Library," Tash said. "We're a completely isolated area. Trying to search through anywhere else in the multiverse would be worse than a needle in a haystack. It'd be like... like looking for a specific grain of sand at a beach!"

"I did have Phoenixia start my search engine up again..." Valerie said, running a hand through her hair fitfully. "Just when I think I'm close to the answer..."

"You could just _ask_ him, kyaa~"

They turned to see the blue-haired fae pointing at the crystal structure in the center of the room. Valerie and Michael tried not to wince at the sheer insensitivity of her statement, though Tash bore no such inhibitions.

"_Asuta-chan_..." Danielle began in Japanese, though she wasn't entirely sure what to say...

"_Ie!_" Aster said, stomping her foot in impatience. "Valerie-chan talked to him before! In my head! That's how she found the pieces inside Michael-kun and Tash-san! So why can't she do it again?"

The fae stared at Valerie, as though daring her to come up with an answer. And, surprisingly enough... she didn't have one.

Valerie, her face curiously expressionless, approached the giant central crystal and laid a hand on its side. Was it her imagination, or was it warmer than it was the last time she was here? "I thought you didn't remember what happened inside your head that day," she said sardonically, turning towards the fae.

Aster smiled. "You asked what happened to me, kyaa, not what happened to you."

The healer cracked a small smile, though whether that was from humor or a wince, even she didn't know. She removed her hand from the crystal—the touch of it left her hand tingling—and walked over toward her own still-glowing pillar. It was as white as white could be, but shone in such a gentle, unassuming way that it didn't hurt to watch it.

_If the red one is everything about Adrian that is Tash_, she thought, _and the green one is everything about him that's Michael, then this one is everything about him that's... me._ At first the thought was so incredulous that she almost dismissed it as impossible, except... except that was that kind of overactive modesty that almost caused her to miss a critical piece of this puzzle.

And she would not, _could_ not, screw up again.

She touched the pillar—it was warm too, just like the crystal—and closed her eyes. Dreamland awaited.

-o-

Valerie stopped moving. It almost looked like she wasn't breathing, but Kuroneko got as close as she could without disturbing the healer, and noted the incredibly slow swell and fall of her stomach—another interesting thing about her, the catgirl noted. The girl was clearly no athlete, and yet she breathed as though she were, from the stomach instead of the chest to maximize lung capacity.

"She's breathing," Kuroneko informed the others. "I think she's in another trance."

"She fell down when she did it to me," Michael muttered, watching the healer closely.

"Maybe she's getting the hang of it better," said Danielle.

Kuroneko shrugged. "Whatever it is, it seriously doesn't look like these soul pieces or whatever need to be attended, so we might as well finish collecting what we have." She turned to Aster, who simply looked blank. Kuroneko realized that the fae might not know how to remove her piece from her body, since she had no experience with a soul of her own. "Do you need help, or..."

"No, kyaa~" Aster said softly. "I can do it."

She held one hand over the crystal, frowned, and then switched over to fae form and held both hands before her as though she was casting a spell. A fourth hum rose in the air, and her chosen pillar began to glow a deep, brilliant blue...

* * *

_"So... is all of th__ese things have been__ a dream, then?"_

_"__They're __whatever you want it to be," the Librarian replied. "Though, for the sake of semantics, 'dream' would probably be one of the more accurate terms to use. Do you _want _them__ to be a dream?"_

_"Not really. That would mean it's not real, that _you're_ not real."_

_He smiled at her. "You of all people should know better than to make judgment calls on what's real and what's not. Look at Ari, for example. She's only real to you, but _through_ you she becomes real to everyone else."_

_She followed him with her eyes as he began circling around her. "Ari's my muse. That's how the partnership works."_

_Adrian smiled, once again seeming unlike his real self. "You and I both know she's not really a muse."_

_The healer remained expressionless. "Actually, Adrian _doesn't_ know that."_

_"Indeed. So who am I? You never really answered that last time..."__ The circling continued and as she followed him, she realized that unlike the other 'dreams', they weren't in the Library. They were in nothing but an expanse of black._

_She was growing tired of questions like these, but since the obvious was what she was missing, the obvious was what she stated. "You're not Adrian."_

_"Correct," he said lightly. "Who else am I not?"_

_Valerie blinked. "Excuse me?"_

_"There is another person whom I _could_ be, but am not." At her baffled expression, he chuckled in a rather familiar way. "Come now, don't tell me you've forgetten already? It's only been four days..."_

_If asked, she wouldn't have been able to tell whether the change happened suddenly or if she had just noticed that he'd been different all along. But the man before her had light brown hair instead of white, pale pink eyes instead of violet, and no cat features whatsoever. _

_"You..." she whispered, astonished. "But... why?"_

_He chuckled again, that infuriating snicker that never quite seemed sincere. "I repeat: why not?"_

* * *

Tash looked around—at the shining white walls of the domed room, at the golden designs adorning them, at the glowing red waist-high pillar in front of her, at the confused and slightly anxious faces of her friends in their positions around her—anywhere and everywhere but the mammoth crystal structure at the center of the room. Michael had looked into it once, and immediately reaffirmed Valerie's order that Tash do anything but. Of course, the first thing she wanted to do after he said that was look inside—just seeing the vague, person-shaped silhouette was maddening—but she restrained herself, and continued to restrain herself.

It had been nearly an hour since Valerie had woken from her trance and left the room, but she had ordered them all to wait here for her, and wait they would.

-o-

_He heard her coming long before he saw her__—she wasn't exactly silent as she clamored up the steep knoll to his little patch of scenery. Silly girl. There was a small game trail of roots and rocks on the other side of the hill that was much easier to climb if she took the time to look around for it, but whatever._

_When she finally arrived within view, he grinned at her and gestured to the spot next to him where his coat was laid out like a picnic blanket. "Sit down, Valerie" he said cheerfully. "You're so tired, you looked like a slinkey bouncing uphill back there!"_

_The healer simply glared at him. "I need to look inside your mind."_

_His grin widened. "Now why should I allow that?"_

_"Because doing so might help me to resurrect someone I care very deeply for? Because it would heal the scars Willowe and Runoa have left on my closest friends? Because said resurrectee would likely go on to save billions of lives in his lifetime?"_

-o-

She had remained in her trance for a surprisingly short time, and when she woke, her eyes were wide and her mind was racing. Tash recalled that it looked like she was about to say something, when she got that peculiar look on her face that the Leader recognized as a sign of Ari talking to her in her mind. The healer closed her mouth, thought a moment, then opened it again.

"Tash," she had asked slowly, "Can I borrow that pendant?"

She was pointing to the broken _Hoshikuzu_ charm, which Tash kept strung around her neck, right next to her own _Nephthys_.

The Librarian didn't hesitate. She removed the ribbon from around her neck, picked the knot loose, and slid the crystal pendant off the string. In her hand, she gave it a final squeeze before handing it to the healer. Valerie took it with a nod, opened a plothole right then and there, and left, promising to return soon.

_Where on earth _is_ she?_ Tash thought impatiently. Unconsciously, she rubbed her neck. She had worn _Hoshikuzu_ for her entire career as Librarian, and felt strange having it off. _Ra, I wish people would _tell_ me things instead of just running off!_ It wasn't that she didn't trust the healer; in fact, the opposite was true. But her patience was running thin, and it was getting harder and harder not to look at that damned crystal...

Just then, the doors opened, and Valerie stepped through.

-o-

_"Everyone dies, Valerie."_

_"Except you know full-well that he _didn't_ really die, don't you? You knew all along what happened to him."_

_He put on a childish grin, just to annoy her. "Ooh, I love this game! I know that you know that I know that you know__—"_

_"Will you knock it off!" she shouted._

_He waved a hand at her dismissively. "Fine, spoil my fun. As it happens, I'm perfectly willing to give you what you want, so there's no need to be hostile."_

_"Why shouldn't I be hostile," she snarled__—or at least, he would have called it snarling, were her face even capable of such an expression, "when you knew all along what I was looking for and _didn't tell me?_"_

_"Oh, come now. You really think I knew from the very beginning? I'm flattered, but you give me too much credit." He leaned back and gazed at the cloudless sky thoughtfully. "Sure, I had dreams, but that's just because of my position. It wasn't until after you found me that I started wondering: how? _How_ did you find me? Because that search engine wasn't just for Adrian's biological signature, wasn't it? You're too smart to leave that out."_

_Valerie looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "It was for his soul-resonance too. The exact combination of physical and spiritual that would lead to him and only him."_

_"And yet I'm not him."_

_"No. You're not."_

-o-

"I have the last piece," Valerie said softly.

Before anyone had a chance to ask how or when, she walked around to the back of the crystal structure and planted herself directly before the remaining pillar between the white one and Micheal's green one, the only one that was left darkened. In the silence that no one dared to break, Valerie removed the broken _Hoshikuzu_ pendant from her pocket and held it tightly to her chest, eyes closed. After a moment, a bright violet escaped her closed fingers, and she placed the glowing pendant almost reverently on the top of the remaining pillar. The light spread to engulf the pillar, and was quickly absorbed by it; the once-dark column of clear crystal was now glowing a gentle rosey yellow.

On some unspoken command, Tash, Aster, Michael, and Valerie all moved in unison to their respective pillars, while Kuroneko ushered the remaining agents back out into the shadowy hallway. She knew instinctively that operations such as this had to be precise, and spectators would just be unnecessary variables in a scientific miracle.

-o-

_"Listen," he said hesitantly. It was the first and possibly the only time she'd seen him act with anything less than total confidence. "Would you... sit here with me a while? Just... sit here?" He looked about to say something else, but decided against it._

_Valerie shook her head. "There are people depending on me to find that piece and get back. I can't just take a__—"_

_"The person depending on you is dead," Zero interrupted, back to his sardonic self, "I think he can wait half an hour for you to recharge your batteries. Wouldn't want you to screw up at some crucial moment or something." He smirked at her._

_She smirked back at him. "Thanks so much for skyrocketing my confidence." But she sat down anyway; she was tired, like he thought, and his spread trenchcoat was big enough for two._

_After a moment, he spoke again. "So... what do you feel?"_

_She sat up. "Excuse me?"_

_"About me," he clarified. "I gotta admit: I'm curious."_

Is he hitting on me?_ she thought incredulously. Then she realized with a start that he was talking about empathy. "Oh! Well, nothing, really. I didn't know you wanted me to__—"_

_"You wanna know what I get from you, just from instinct alone?" he asked her. Without waiting for an answer, he continued. "It's not that hard to figure out, really. Empathy means you avoid place with a high concentration of emotion in order to avoid getting overwhelmed, and when treating patients, you drain off their negative emotions and take them into yourself to be grounded out later. About the only thing you _don't_ do is naturally recharge yourself on happiness. I don't think you've _ever_ let yourself get a little giddy off positive emotions, have you?_

_"You treat your empathy as a job, a necessity," he said softly. "But it's not. It's a part of you."_

-o-

The door clicked shut and the lights immediately dimmed, save for the five colored pillars surrounding the crystal structure in the center. Following an impulse from somewhere deep within her, Valerie raised her right hand and held it directly over the top of her pillar. Her eyes widened as she felt a small surge of what felt like lightning travel down her arm and into the crystal, and the white light within it began to glow many times brighter, lighting up the room like a brilliantly glowing star. A small, barely audible noise, like the hum of electricity, rose in the air.

One by one, Michael, Aster, and finally Tash followed her lead. Red, blue, and green glows grew brighter and brighter, until their colors blended and mixed until color and light were all there was—and yet none of them were blinded. Each of stared into the storm of brilliance in awe; none of them could see the others in the room, or even their own hands which seemed lock in place above the five pillars, but they could _feel_ each others' minds, blending and overlapping and finally centralizing over the crystal along with the colors.

Then, without any prompting at all, the remaining pillar, the one with the broken _Hoshikuzu_ pendant on top, began to shine like the rest, adding its rose-tinted yellow to the storm like sunshine to a rainbow.

Valerie smiled.

-o-

_Valerie was stunned to silence._

_"You're trapping yourself in this bizarre cycle, Valerie," Zero continued. "I've seen it__—watching it right now, in fact! It's a beautiful day and I'm perfectly content right now, but you won't let yourself unwind _with_ me. You keep trying to be this big guardian and protector, like you have to be larger than life in order to protect everyone you love. But that's not you at all. You're not a fighter, you're a healer, someone who is _right there_ with the people... but you can't _do_ that if you don't put yourself completely on their level, and feel what they feel in its fullness, the downs _and_ the ups._

_"You're not embracing your gifts like you should."_

_The empath scowled nervously. "Y-you don't know anything... And how the hell have you been watching me?"_

_He tapped his temple knowingly. "Memories, partially. The rest I could just infer. Not that hard when you're programmed to read people instantaneously and exploit their weaknesses." He leaned back down, folding his arms behind his head and looking back up at the sky. "For example, do you let your self open up when you feel others having sex? Or partying? Or are happy and excited, in ways beyond things like getting a gift or a hug? You probably don't."_

_"What do you care!"_

_This time he actually sat up and looked at her in a rare moment of sincerity. "What do I care? Geez, Valerie, it's those little moments of emotional fulfillment that keep us sane! The fact that you can go without all of that while still taking on whatever negativity you find makes me both respect and fear you. And, in all honesty, kind of fear _for_ you. I mean, I really have to wonder _why_ you deny such a basic part of yourself. Is it ethics? Or just some deep-set form of self-depreciation?"_

_Her silence was all the answer he needed. _

-o-

There were five hums now, all different tones that _should_ have been discordant, but instead blended together in a harmony that made the colors and swirling lights pulse and resonate wildly. It was a sound like distant thunder, continually rolling in but never quite reaching, and they knew it was time.

As one, each of the four (or was it five?) people present rebuilt Adrian in their minds. Together they remembered a man who had learned the hard way that being a hero means that your life is not your own; who, despite all the evil he's fought and seen and committed, remained convinced that life is worth living and that innocence should be protected. A man who bore pain and sadness wherever he went, always moving forward because he dared not look back. He's loved and fought and protected things he never thought would outlive him, and he's sheltered and helped and feared for things he never thought he'd outlive. He has both halted and committed atrocities only heard about in nightmares, and he has seen and performed miracles only read about in books. He's been called a god by some and a demon by more, but at the end of the day he was just a person—just a boy, with dreams and regrets like anyone else, who happened to have existed for a hundred lifetimes but had only just begun to actually _live_.

And goddammit, he deserved more than this.

Fueled by the magic, their minds and memories collided and met, and along the way something fused.

_Bad day, Jen..._

_I thought I'd feel lighter, but I can't shake this feeling..._

_Adrian-kun will be mad at me..._

_You don't feel a thing, do you?_

_It's like he's still there, closer than ever..._

_Say something, damn you! Why won't you say anything?_

_I can pretend for a while longer, can't I?_

_So that's how a hero fights..._

In a few ticking seconds that lasted eons, everything was laid bare and exposed for anyone who cared to look. All the pain, sadness, and fear, all the joy and all the love. All the accomplishments and regrets, all the beliefs and dreams. All the heroic efforts, and all the moments of cowardice, all mixed in a jumble of memories.

And then, like a miracle from the past...

_Huh... Didn't think my soul was so fragile..._

-o-

_"I'm not going to the Library," he said softly, "but there's a way you can take my piece back with you. Lemme see that pendant." He pointed to the broken _Hoshikuzu_ pendant poking out of Valerie's front pocket._

_Valerie tugged the crystal out and laid it in her hand. Back in the white room, when she realized who she needed to find, she knew immediately that he would refuse to return to the Library with her, so Ari had suggested a clever alternative: _Hoshikuzu_. Having been with Adrian for so many years, it was close enough to him to actually recognize his soul and facilitate a transfer__—particularly if the recipient of that transfer was an empath._

Tailor-made to support the extra weight_, Valerie thought to herself as she handed the pendant over. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" she asked._

_He felt around the crystal part of the pendant until he found a sharp edge, then used it to make a shallow slash in each of his palms. "Trust me," he said, "I know a few things about souls." With a deep breath in, he closed his eyes and enclosed the pendant entirely in his cupped hands._

_When he breathed out, a brilliant violet light, so familiar to Valerie now, could be seen escaping his fingers. It lasted only a moment before the glow died down. When he uncupped his hands and handed the pendant back, the crystal seemed clearer, and a jolt ran up the healer's arm when she took it. _

_"Thank you," she said. _

_He simply laid back down and waved a hand dismissively. The cut on his palm was already closing. "Let me know how it goes!" he said cheerily. _

_Valerie smiled, shook her head, and turned for home._

-o-

As though led by a conductor, everything began to spiral around one central point in an insane, chaotic dance, faster and faster. Time sped up again, and it and noise and light all melded into one focal point of blinding symphonic light. The agents were forced to shield their eyes as everything came to a head in a crescendo of color and a blaze of sound.

The sudden silence that abruptly followed was, if possible, even more deafening.

The crystal in the center, previously ablaze with color and light, suddenly became clear as air. Like a sped-up film of melting ice, the giant structure melted into the floor as though it simply ceased to exist. Inch by inch, The preserved body trapped inside was released, held upright as though resting on a cushion of light. When the crystal was gone, the light slowly dissipated, gently depositing the young man on his feet.

His trenchcoat fluttered.

One of his ears twitched.

Adrian the Librarian opened his eyes.

* * *

**AN:** Funny thought occurred to me the other day. I thought to myself, "Adrian's not Archer, he's frigging Doctor Who!" This was immediately followed by, "No wonder Tash loves him..." XDD

Just one more (relatively short) chapter to go, folks! And don't forget to leave a nice review on your way out. =P


	5. Spirit

**AN:** This is partly the final chapter, and partly an epilogue of sorts. It's meant to shoe in a few later plot points as well as tie everything from this plotline up. And hopefully the general awesome of this chapter will make up for the general fail of my writing speed on this project. Enjoy!

Though, if you received the alert for this chapter at the same time as chapter 4, could you kindly leave a review for both chapters? Thanks. ^^

**Disclaimer:** All I own is Valerie and her team. Oh, and the final scene was written by MotL, but only because he requested to do it.

* * *

_"And I'd give up forever to touch you,  
Cause I know that you feel me somehow.  
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be,  
And I don't want to go home right now._

_"And all I can taste is this moment,  
And all I can breathe is your life.  
Sure, sooner or later, it's over.  
I just don't want to miss you tonight."  
_

—The Goo-Goo Dolls, "Iris"

* * *

Adrian the Librarian opened his eyes.

No one else even dared to breathe.

For a long moment, it seemed as though time had ceased, and the entire multiverse had shrunk down encompass five individuals with the shining walls of the little white room as its borders. There were no fandoms. There were no Sues to capture. There were no other Society agents. There wasn't even a Library Arcanium. There was only Adrian, blinking in confusion against the blinding white light and surrounded by those who were now bound closer to him than family.

Tash was the first to move, and her stride and demeanor looked dangerous. Michael was the second to move; he put out a hand to stop her.

"Give him a minute. He's probably disoriented."

The Leader rounded on him. "I don't bloody care if he's bloody disoriented! _Adrian, you fucking bastard!_" she shouted as her brother attempted to restrain her, "How _dare_ you leave me behind! How _dare_ you knock me out with the _specific_ intention of going off to die! You _know_ I'm supposed to die before you; how _dare_ you break your promise! Well I've got news for you, mister—Tyler and Drake have found and broken through every one of your remaining booby traps, so you have _no_ candy reserves left! _None!_ And Phoenixia is hereby off-limits until I say otherwise! And you are _grounded_, with _no_ Counter Guardian missions whatsoever; and if the Powers That Be have something to say about that, then _I don't bloody care!_ And you're sleeping on the couch for a month, you bastard! And I'm filling your office with yellow Starbursts!"

Suddenly, the Librarian seemed able to focus, and his gaze stopped on the love of his life. "Oh, come on!" he whined, "The yellow ones are disgusting!"

Letting out a choked sob, Tash threw herself at her lover, trying and failing to simultaneously kiss the life out of him (or back into him, as it happened) and continue her rant, which began to involve expletives in multiple languages. When she finally managed to tear herself away, Michael took his turn with a great bear hug around his best friend, grinning from ear to ear. Aster was completely unable to contain herself—the fae took flight and immediately began circling her friends and zigzagging all around the room, whooping her joy to the world.

In the midst of all this, Adrian spent a long while simply being the most confused he'd ever been in his life. Looking around, he seemed even more puzzled by his surroundings—he could make out a little of the golden designs' meanings on the luminous walls, but that just confused him further. What was he doing here? What were his friends so happy about?

And then he caught sight of the broken _Hoshikuzu_ pendant resting atop the fourth pillar.

Adrian's eyes went wide as everything came back to him in a rush of memories—the invasion, evacuating his friends to the Real World, the battle inside the Pillar of Knowledge, his own death, even his visits to hell and purgatory. He looked at Tash, who was still alternately hugging him and cursing his name. But when she saw his face, she knew.

He swept his lover up in a fierce hug, for once with the intent of finding his own comfort, rather than the other way around. This was a lot to take in, even for him, and he found stability in the familiar scent of her hair. "Tash," he whispered, his throat raw, "How did this happen?"

The slender blonde Leader—Librarian no longer—pulled Adrian down for another kiss, this one gentler than the others. "There'll be time for that later, love. Right now we need to celebrate."

Adrian could only nod as she began to lead him out of the room. Michael quickly followed, rapidly relaying everything the Librarian had missed in his absence and completely unable to stop grinning. Aster brought up the rear, still in flight and still shouting happily in Japanese.

And Valerie?

While Adrian was being welcomed back into the world, Valerie could only take a step backward, and then another, until she was leaning against the curved walls of the shining room. As silently as she could, she slid down the wall and hugged her knees to her chest, tears already pricking at her eyes. By the time the others had left and she was alone, she was sobbing uncontrollably. Tears rolled in rivers down her cheeks until her body trembled with the sheer weight of it all, and still she did not make a sound.

She kept her head bowed, but soon became dimly aware of Kuroneko's light footsteps, followed by those of her teammates. Concern emanated from all of them, but Valerie did not move.

"...It's probably best if we leave her alone," she heard Kuroneko say to the others.

There was a pause as Stacey and Monika exchanged a look.

"No it's not," said Monika.

Stacey and Terrie knelt down and wrapped their arms around their friend while Monika and Danielle, who did not do the hugging thing, sat down across from her and placed a hand on the empath's knees.

Valerie, who was finally feeling the impact of her grief at the death of a friend, grief she had so long suppressed for a death she had so long denied, merely leaned into their touch and cried until she had no tears left.

-o-

"_And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming, or the moment of truth in your lies..._"

Valerie sang to herself as she worked, for the first time in ages. She was cleaning up the section of the monitor room that had been "hers" for the past few months. In actuality, it had been almost a week since she'd seen it last, and it had been a busy few days indeed.

The moment Michael set foot outside of the shining white room into the calm ocean of shadows beyond, the Darkness had roared awake from its forced hibernation, determined to both catch the company off-guard and to make up for lost time. However, lightning-fast, Tash lit a controlled bonfire under the creature's nose, driving the parasite back into the safety of Micheal's mind in a manner that left Adrian both pleased and impressed. Not surprised though. He knew he'd left the Library in good hands.

When discussing how to break the news of his return to the rest of the Society, Adrian was all for simply showing up at breakfast the next morning and waiting for someone to notice (though Phoenixia suspected he had another reason for desiring privacy during his first night back). However, there was no stopping Aster—the little fae had zipped through the building, joyously passing the news around. Given her brief fling with insanity, most of the Library's occupants weren't exactly inclined to believe her, but little by little, they started to grow curious. Only a few hours later, Adrian's booming voice could be heard echoing through the halls in an exasperated shout:

"By the Powers That Be, if I catch one more person peeking into my bedroom door, I will make them dust the encyclopedia shelves until Phoenixia is straight and I'm not! Which is _five days after the end of my immortal, eternal life!_" This was followed by the sound of a door slamming shut.

In the silence that followed, a small, poorly restrained giggle managed to be heard.

And all bets were off after that.

"_When everything feels like the movies... Yeah, you bleed just to know you're alive..._"

With Adrian's return, the title of Librarian was, by default, passed back to him. However, Tash wasn't exactly willing to step down—partly because she claimed that Michael was a thousand times better Chief Agent than she ever was, but mostly because, now that she had experienced some of what her beloved went through every day, she was determined to ease that burden in any way she could. In the end, the blonde Leader was given an intermediary position, temporarily dubbed "Assistant Librarian" until someone could come up with a cooler-sounding title. Her exact duties were still being worked out, but so far everyone was pleased with the arrangement.

In the end, it was kind of a surprise to find out that, even though everything was different now, very little had actually changed. Rhia still cooked, Tyler still ate, Aster still read manga, Shirley still beat up Ben, Phoenixia still showed off her body at every opportunity, and Valerie still kept mostly to herself and sang softly in the hallways. The worlds continued to turn, just like they had when a life was taken away from them instead of given back. None but those in the Library Arcanium would know of the miracle that had occurred that day. Only this time... this time it felt _right_.

"_And I don't want the world to see me, 'cause I don't think that they'd understand..._"

"I'd missed that."

Valerie whipped around in surprise to see Adrian leaning against the doorway, a small smile on his face. It still hadn't stopped being wonderful, seeing the man in mundane, everyday situations, alive as anyone could be, and she couldn't help but smile in return.

"The singing, I mean," he said, shoving off the doorframe and stepping towards her. "Wherever I was before you rescued me, one of the things I really missed was listening to you sing absently as you went about your day."

Valerie blushed, though she was secretly pleased by the praise. "It's not as though it's anything special..."

"Quite the contrary," Adrian interrupted, "Memories of you and Tash and Michael and Aster were what kept me sane. It was all I could think of—finding some way to get back here, to all of you."

The empath covered her reaction with a small chuckle. "Nine months _is_ a long time to wait, I suppose..." Then she laughed. "You're lucky we only have three new agents to introduce to you, Adrian. One of us could've had a baby in the time you were gone!"

A curious expression crossed the Librarian's face. "...Did any of you?"

"No!"

A split second passed, and then they both burst out laughing, tears pricking at their eyes. "Though I suppose it's appropriate, in its way," Adrian decided. "Nine months must be how long it takes for a man to be reborn."

"We were all reborn, Adrian," said Valerie. "One way or another, very very few things are the same as how you left them."

"But it's the important things that are the same."

"Yeah."

Adrian swallowed. "I... I don't know how I could possibly begin to thank you for everything you've done—"

She turned red again. "I just did what anyone here would have done, had they the right set of talents and information," she said hurriedly. "Besides, if you want to thank someone, talk to Kuroneko. She's the one who—"

"I've already spoken to Kuroneko," Adrian interrupted with a smile, "and believe me, she was not nearly so unnecessarily modest! But she did tell me to give you this, and Tash and I both agree you should have it." He uncurled his hand and offered its contents to her: it was the broken _Hoshikuzu_ pendant.

Valerie was confused. "But... aren't you going to fix it?"

He shook his head sadly. "It wasn't just broken that night, Valerie, it was _shattered_. I doubt there are any sizable pieces left to be found, and everything else was swept away by the wind. It really is just stardust now."

The healer was silent for a moment, then accepted the gift with reverence.

"I don't know what I can _begin_ to do repay you," Adrian said solemnly, "—and don't try to argue with me, because I will!—but I figure this is a start."

"Yeah, well..." Valerie said, her throat beginning to close up, "Just... You'd better not do this again! It was quite a lot of trouble bringing you back, so if you pull any more stupid stunts, then I'll—" but no more words would come through.

"Trust me," Adrian said after a time, "you're not the first person to give me incomprehensible death threats today."

Valerie let out a choked sound that might have been a laugh, and suddenly they were both swept up in each other's arms. And all Valerie was able to do was hold him tightly... and cry. He was here. He was real. He was safe. It wouldn't always be that way, she knew. As Zero had said, everyone dies. But for now, today, their own mortality seemed like such a far-off thing. And maybe, for a while at least, they could pretend it would always be that way.

"Thank you, mi'hala," Adrian whispered hoarsely into her hair. "Not just for this. For everything. I honestly don't know where we'd all be without you."

"Knee-deep in shit, that's where," the empath replied with a tearful laugh.

"And we'd all do best to remember it!" he finished, releasing her and holding her at arm's length. He looked her over a time or two, and smiled at what he saw. "You're different too, you know," he said finally. "I mean, you've always been different, but you're different than how you were before."

"Yeah," said Valerie. "I am."

After a moment, Adrian gave a small sigh. But the smile remained. "I should get going," he said. "There's so much I've got to catch up on, but I just wanted to come in and say that. The thank-you bit, I mean. And—"

"Relax, Adrian," Valerie said with a smile. "I will _definitely_ be seeing you around."

"And _that_," he said, "is one of the best bits of news I've heard all day."

"Not _the_ best?" she teased.

"Oh, I think you know what _the_ best was," he replied, grinning. "See ya!"

Valerie watched him as he left, the familiar _swish_ of his trenchcoat so wonderful in her ears. "See you, Adrian," she said softly.

And she was alone again.

Except... she wasn't alone. She'd never been alone in her entire life, and it had taken her twenty-two years and the uncannily accurate advice of a brand new ally to realize it.

In her life—but especially in the past two years of it—Valerie had met more people and been to more places than she might have ever imagined. As anyone in the Society could attest, life in the Library was a dream come true for those who wanted more from life than Reality could offer, for those who turned to books and stories for the release to travel to far-distant places... for those who wanted, more desperately than anything else, to believe that magic was real. And yet none of the, not one, spoke of a deep feeling of connection, of unity with something larger every time they used their powers or special skills. Of hopes and fears so basic and universal that they were impossible to ignore!

Valerie didn't know whether this feeling was unique to herself or something everyone had the potential for but didn't quite know how to access. _She_ certainly hadn't had access to it before, although she knew deep down that it was there. _Everything is connected, deep down_, she thought. _And now, because of what happened, we've drawn that connection a little closer to the surface._

It was at once the loneliest and least lonely feeling in the world.

Without knowing precisely why, the empath turned to her monitor and keyed in a set of coordinates that she had come to know quite well of late. A small plothole opened behind the monitor, and through it she could see that familiar grassy knoll where she knew someone was awaiting her return.

"_When everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am..._"

Valerie gripped _Hoshikuzu_ tightly, smiled, and stepped through the plothole.

"_I just want you to know who I am..._"

-o-

The man who called himself Zero was waiting for her.

Valerie looked at him and resisted the urge to smile—he looked so like Adrian, it was hard not to. There were several key differences though: light, mousey brown hair instead of white; pale pink eyes instead of violet; and, of course, the distinct lack of cat features. Of them, the latter probably made the most sense. Zero was a genetic replica of Adrian created by Runoa, and the Librarian's furry features were added by Tash and not an inherent part of his DNA.

When he saw her, he stood up and approached her, all the time wearing that odd little half-smile she'd come to associate with him. "Did it work?" he asked.

She nodded. "But it's probably best if Adrian's return is kept a secret for now. We finally have an advantage that Runoa doesn't know about. I'd like to keep it that way for as long as possible."

Zero nodded in understanding. "With the Sovereigns and Silri running around, you'll need every ace-in-the-hole you can get your hands on."

Valerie clasped her hands behind her back. "I... I also wanted to thank you. For what you said before. Empathy may be a calling, but any calling requires passion... and passion is the first thing to go when you calling turns into your job. It made me bad at what I do, and everyone almost suffered for it."

He smiled. "Nah, you would've found a way."

She rolled her eyes. "_How_, oh smart one?"

"I dunno. I just know that you would have." He continued grinning at her.

Valerie drew in a breath to retort... and then let it out as a sigh. Zero was nothing like Adrian, but something told her he was good all the same. "I know it's kind of a funny thing to say, since I'm not going anywhere, but... I'm glad I got to meet you." She bit her lip in thought, and then smiled as she looked up at him again, drawing something from her pocket. "Adrian gave me this, but... I get the feeling you should have it. Tash doesn't need it anymore and... well, neither do I, really. So here." She handed it to him and smiled when he took it gently in one hand. "Maybe you can think of something appropriate for it."

Zero looked at the _Hoshikuzu_ pendant thoughtfully. Valerie noticed that the cut in his hand had already healed over. "It's good," he said slowly, "knowing I have a friend around somewhere. You don't come across those too often, especially not in my case."

"What do you mean?"

He chuckled and pocketed the trinket. "I'm on the run, remember? Maybe Runoa doesn't think I'm worth chasing, but Order isn't going to let me live, and neither will Creation. And in case you hadn't noticed, it's rather difficult keeping your whereabouts a secret from a pack of near-omniscient beings."

"Then come live at the Library," Valerie said earnestly. However, the smile fell from her face as Zero burst out laughing. "What?" she asked, vaguely insulted.

"Don't misunderstand me," he said, still chuckling, " Technically, I _am_ a Gary-Stu. Even if it's not the basement I hang out in, I'd still be a prisoner there. No matter how pretty it is, a cage is still a cage."

"We'll prohibit you. After two hours, we'll know you can be trusted and you'll be free to come and go as you please. We can protect you, Zero!"

"Not happening," Zero said as the healer's eyes widened. "First of all, don't make the mistake of thinking I need protecting—I said it'd be difficult, but not impossible. Not even _remotely_ impossible. And second of all..." he paused to gather his thoughts. "Even though world domination does not interest me the way it does most Stus, I take enjoyment and pride in my abilities and have no wish to relinquish them." With a smirk, the replica summoned a plothole behind him and slowly stepped through. "I get the feeling we'll meet again soon, Valerie. I certainly hope we do."

And he was gone, leaving Valerie wondering in increasing apprehension if she had just made a grave mistake.

-o-

Zero smiled as he stepped out of the plothole and surveyed his surroundings. He had arrived at a craggy cliffside, somewhere near the ocean if the smell of salt water was any indication. That was good, he liked cliffs. They made him feel as larger-than-life on the outside as he did on the inside.

This one, however, was doubly nice. There were boulders and other such giant rocks, but there was also greenery and plant life—grass beneath his feet and leafy branches overhead, even a handful of rosebushes, though the Powers That Be knew how they thrived in the salty air. The sunset darkened the budding red blossoms a deep indigo color, almost violet, and Zero just had to laugh at the irony.

He took _Hoshikuzu_ out of his pocket.

Valerie was right, of course. There was no more need for _stardust_ in the world, because stardust was everywhere—hell, people were _made_ of it. So was everything else, for that matter. It connected everything in the universe, deep down. So what did it matter if one sword, however powerful and symbolic, was broken? It just meant that it was time for a fresh start.

It was then that Zero realized that Valerie was right about something else as well: he _did_ know what to do now.

He looked around for a moment, and spotted a tree growing on the edge of a narrow piece of rock jutting over the cliffside. It was a young tree, barely a sapling, really, and the cliff hung so far over the side it was dizzying. It would break apart and fall into the ocean below someday, he knew. But for now, it suited his purposes just fine.

He chose a branch at about eye level, and hung _Hoshikuzu_ by its string, where the little pendant dangled and swung in the breeze. He then took a moment to dig around in his trenchcoat pockets until he found a small, unlined notebook bound in black. In actuality, it was one of Creation's unused sketchpads, and Zero had nabbed it the day before he left Runoa's fortress as one last _"Take that"_ to his creator. A cheap and probably useless shot, he knew, but he hadn't exactly been in a proper state of mind that day. But there was a miniature pencil attached, so it too served his purposes, even if he hadn't known that at the time.

In spiked, slanted handwriting, he wrote:

_Journal: Final entry._

_I doubt anyone will read this. By the time this book is found, it'll probably be underwater somewhere, completely illegible. Regardless, fictional characters don't mean much in the grand scheme of things, but that doesn't mean it doesn't mean something to me._

_Willowe said that Sues and Stus lock themselves into a never-ending cycle corrupting and conquering. Silri said that she and I were born as nothing but weapons for those who would use us, and that it's impossible to escape that. Runoa said it was my purpose in life to be a relentless hunter who would never stop until I achieved my goals. All three of them were right, but Valerie helped me realize something else:_

_Every door swings both ways._

_Runoa and the Sovereigns are powerful, far more powerful than anyone save Adrian might realize. Silri is confused, but she's a loose cannon and loose on the worlds; there's no telling what havoc she might cause. Willowe... Willowe died a broken woman, and there was nothing anyone, not even herself, could do to save her from that. "Being born into perfection eventually corrupts us all," she said. "We keep doing the same thing over and over again, always expecting a different result. And yet we can't stop."_

_I wasn't _born_ into perfection—I was created. And that puts me in a unique position indeed._

There Zero paused in his writing a moment, pondering to himself exactly what that position would be...

_Adrian had a purpose in life from the moment he was born to the moment he died_, he wrote,_ and that purpose defined him in ways even he didn't realize. But I think I understand now, what it means to be a hero. It's not about giving up your life in order to save others, it's about being the kind of person that others would go to impossible lengths to save. _

_The Society's enemies are powerful, but so am I. Runoa thinks she's always three steps ahead, but I'm the one thing she can't predict. I'll be the wild card in this game of hers, and when the time finally comes that she backs herself into a corner, I know exactly where I'll be standing. Look out world. I won't be in hiding for much longer._

Zero paused again, biting the tiny pencil in thought before continuing.

_It's a strange feeling. I suppose I should be nervous, or at the very least questioning my own existence, what with being Adrian's replica and all... but there doesn't seem to be a point to either exercise. Sure, I'm different from everyone else, but who isn't? That's another decision I've made lately: it's not the destination that counts, and _certainly_ not the starting point—the former is the same for everyone, and the latter does nothing but give you the basic tools for your journey. And it's the journey that matters the most in life, because of the people you meet and the person you become along the way. Simple as that. If nothing else, _that_ is what I will remember. _

_I wonder what adventures I'll have?_

_I guess I'll find out, won't I?_

And he closed the book.

Gently, carefully, Zero set the little notepad against the trunk of the tree so that it rested directly beneath the pendant, nestled between two roots. It wasn't much of a marker, since neither the pendant nor the book were particularly noticeable unless you were looking for them. In fact, he realized with a small chuckle, it wasn't even a marker _for_ anything anymore—Adrian was alive now. But then, maybe it could mark something else entirely: not a death, but new life. More than one, actually.

"Damn-fool _lucky_ is what you are," Zero said softly. "Type IV Immortal or not, you _would_ have died, but for an extremely unlikely set of circumstances. You really gotta wonder what that says about the validity of destiny. Not that I'd trade places with you for anything, but I gotta admit, you've got some pretty cool friends." A wind blew up, and he chuckled to himself. "We'll meet someday," he said. "Maybe not someday soon, but when you're ready to meet me and I'm ready to meet you, we'll find our way to each other... And then I've got some questions for you. After all, what kind of Librarian leaves his help desk empty?"

He did not expect an answer, though, for all he knew, there might have been one. This cliff was narrow and uneven, destined to break apart and be swallowed by the ocean someday. And yet the trees were strong and unyielding, and their roots ran thick and deep. Roots break rocks apart, but they can hold them together too. Just as the rosebushes shouldn't have been there, but were, perhaps the cliff itself would defy all logic and cling to life. Maybe the trees would die, and the ocean would claim this place, as it eventually claimed everything. Maybe the little crystal pendant and the notebook would wash away, never to be seen again. But maybe they wouldn't. Maybe this place would survive.

_Hoshikuzu_ swung back and forth on its string, and the pages of the little black book fluttered in the breeze. Zero smiled, and turned to leave.

Maybe someone would find it one day.

-o-

Valerie quickened her pace as she strode up the Library's hallway. Despite being worried about Zero, she had decided to keep his existence a secret for the moment. He certainly wasn't against the Society, and while he wasn't quite with them, he still had a right to his own path in life. She just hoped that it wouldn't force Zero and her friends to cross swords someday... because she wasn't quite sure which side would need her most if it came to that.

But that was put out of her mind as she rounded the corner, for something else had caused the healer to quicken her step. Mingling with her own worry was an air of tension, of fear and worry in the Library. Something had happened while she was out... something bad.

"Valerie."

At the sound of her name, she stopped as Adrian emerged from a doorway, a silvery trenchcoat flapping on his heels. Though barely a few hours ago, he had been laughing and relaxing and happy, it was like that had never happened now. Every inch of his body was in combat readiness, but she could feel the hot anger roiling just beneath the surface and the fury burning in his violet eyes.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

"Go get Aimee and equip yourselves with whatever healing kits you think you'll need. Then give field first aid kits to all the Agents, ASAP. We're probably not going to have time to evacuate back to the Library on the battlefield."

"What? I don't think we have anything—Adrian what are you talking about?" Valerie had to hustle as he moved past her, pulling out his communicator to talk to someone. "What's happening?"

"I know it's sudden, but we're mustering the entire Society into this mission." His grip tightened on his communicator so much it creaked in protest. "Aster's been taken... by Runoa."

* * *

**AN:** _-falls over ded-_ Well... THAT was certainly a challenge. Fun in some places, downright impossible in others. Also long. And I couldn't really help the fact that a good fifty percent of the text was in italics. XD

**Additional Disclaimer:** Zero (not to be confused with _Agent_ Zero) is indeed the same character who appeared a few times in previous chapters of this fic, and also appeared at the end of _Insert Fate-Cracking Moment Here_, though this is his official introductory fic. He is the property of Master of the Library, but I will be working extensively with him (and even MotL admitted that it's kind of a joint character now), so kindly don't use him without one or both of our permissions. Kthx. ^^

I guess all I can say is that I REALLY hope this satisfies, because this was in the works for _months_. I enjoyed it, I really did, but there's a lot of pressure when you're writing something this anticipated/important to the plotline. And I'm not even finished! You heard right: we have even _more_ surprises in the works. So stay tuned, Society fans! The fun has only just begun.

Reviews? Pretty please? Moar cake is in store if you do! =D


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